Overjoyed with this incriminating deposition, His Worship gave orders for the prisoner's formal arrest. Aloud he remarked:
"What have I always said? Beware of wimple folks. They are the deep ones. Their naivete is nothing but a disguise. Here we have a case in point. This boy, from all accounts, is the pure type of the callous murderer. He stutters. He makes uncalled-for gurglings of a bestial nature. He has pendulous ears, and certain other stigmata of degeneration which are familiar to all conversant with criminal anthropology. Of course he denies everything. But mark my words! After six or seven months, when the prison diet begins to take effect, he will confess. I know the species; it is all too common. Meanwhile we must congratulate ourselves on having tracked down the culprit so soon."
To condemn for homicide the cousin of a Catholic priest warmed the cockles of his free-thinking heart. In fact, on second thoughts, it was better than if he had caught the real murderer who might have turned out to be an atheist, which would have been bad enough—or possibly a freemason, which would have been really awkward. The news spread rapidly over the island, and caused wild rejoicings among the anti-clericals.
The rejoicings were of brief duration.
Torquemada, as usual, was in fighting trim. Like all God-fearing ascetics, he was a man-eater at heart. He made up his mind long ago to eat the judge, whom he considered an offence to Heaven and earth—the official mouthpiece of the devil. Up to the present he had bided his time, waiting for a good opportunity. The time was now ripe.
Not that he greatly loved his cousin. The family to which the unhappy youth belonged was of no credit or use to himself, and this particular member was worse than useless, being afflicted with an unpardonable vice—lack of judgment. His stupidity had already got him into a number of minor scrapes. As a child he annoyed foreigners by ingenuous requests for money, stole flowers from neighbours' gardens because they were so irresistibly pretty, tied saucepans to their cats because they had such irresistibly long tails and made such irresistibly droll movements and noises in order to get rid of them, frightened old ladies by making faces at them; sometimes, by way of a change, he threw off a fit; later on, he had taken to smashing crockery, mooning about the vineyards, forgetting errands entrusted to him, throwing stones at passing carriages and making a general nuisance of himself. The PARROCO knew that he had been dismissed as incompetent by tradespeople to whom he was apprenticed, by farmers who had employed him as a labourer. He could not even repeat his Ave Maria without producing sinister crepitations from his gullet. And now he had crowned all by this surpassing act of imprudence. If he had only kept his mouth shut, like everybody else. But there! What could you expect from a fool?
A genuine murderer—it was most irreligious, of course. Still, some homicides were fairly justifiable, others almost meritorious; and a criminal of this kind showed, in every case, undeniable traces of manliness; one could not help respecting him in an oblique sort of fashion. But a fool! Torquemada, the zealous priest, the man of God, could never quite repress the promptings of his blood. He had all the fanatic's appreciation of violent methods; all the Southerner's fondness for a miscreant, and contempt for a simpleton. A mere fool—what's the use of him on earth? Had the culprit been any ordinary Christian, His Reverence would not have dreamt of interfering; gladly would he have let him spend the remainder of his day sin prison which everybody knew to be the best place for stupid people—it kept them out of mischief.
But this was not an ordinary Christian. He was a relation. A relation! That meant that one must show fight for him, if only for the sake of public appearances.
He held a hurried council with his family and, half an hour later, a second one with the more influential members of the priesthood. It was decided, in both cases, that the occasion was favourable for a long-deferred contest between the Powers of Light and the powers of darkness, the Catholic Church and modernism, the Clergy of Nepenthe and the secular authority of law and order as personified by that judge in whom all evil, public and private, flowed together. A noble parting cheque which he had just received from Mr. van Koppen for some urgent repairs to the parish organ came in handy. It would enable him to face the adversary with good hopes of success. To his friends he said:
"An insult to my family! I shall not take it lying down. Let them see what a humble servant of God can do."