“The explanation was at once accepted. The man's life, in the public mind, called for an end like that. St. Alban after his career, should by every canon of the tragic muse, go that way.”
He made a careless gesture with his fingers.
“I saw the disturbed dust on the wall where the pistol had been moved, the bits of split cap under the hammer, and the powder marks on the muzzle.
“But I let the thing go. It seemed in keeping with the destiny of the man. And it completed the sardonic picture. It was all fated, as the Gaelic people say.... I saw no reason to disturb it.”
“Then there was some other mystery?” I ventured.
He nodded his big head slowly.
“There is an ancient belief,” he said, “that the hunted thing always turns on us. Well, if there was ever a man in this world on whom the hunted thing awfully turned, it was St. Alban.”
He put out his hand.
“Look at the shaft yonder,” he said, “lifted to his memory, towering over the whole of this English country, and cut on its base with his services to England and the brave words he said on that fatal morning on the Channel boat. Every schoolboy knows the words:
“'Don't threaten, fire if you like!'