"We're quite prepared for that," answered the solicitor; "but anyhow it can't last indefinitely. The old man is nearly eighty, though he still walks about, and the people at the inn here laugh and say they don't believe he will ever die."
Father Brown jumped up with one of his rare but rapid movements, but remained with his hands on the table, leaning forward and looking his friend in the face.
"That's it," he cried in a low but excited voice. "That's the only problem. That's the only real difficulty. How will he die? How on earth is he to die?"
"What on earth do you mean?" asked Granby.
"I mean," came the voice of the priest out of the darkening room, "that I know the crime that James Musgrave committed."
His tones had such a chill in them that Granby could hardly repress a shiver; he murmured a further question.
"It was really the worst crime in the world," said Father Brown. "At least, many communities and civilizations have accounted it so. It was always from the earliest times marked out in tribe and village for tremendous punishment. But anyhow, I know now what young Musgrave really did and why he did it."
"And what did he do?" asked the lawyer.
"He killed his father," answered the priest.
The lawyer in his turn rose from his seat and gazed across the table with wrinkled brows.