"Mad! stark mad!" he told himself. "And to think that none of us ever guessed it!"
Now that the fact was actually revealed he perceived, too late, what a lurid light it threw upon the puzzles of the past. As to the man's madness there could be no shred of doubt. He stood gibbering in front of him. And though Philip was very far from being, in any sense, an expert in mental pathology, he was acute enough to realise that an element of something horrible, of something altogether dangerous, differentiated this man's madness from that of the ordinary lunatic. As by the stroke of a magician's wand the clergyman had been transformed into a fiend. He held out his hand toward Philip, never ceasing to chuckle. Even his voice was changed; it had become an almost childish treble.
"Yes, I did it. I! I! Seven, Philip--seven harlots slain by my single hand! All England rings with it, yet no one guesses it was I!"
In the sudden horror of the situation the young man found it difficult to preserve his presence of mind. He endeavoured to collect his thoughts. He resolved to continue to speak with the voice of authority. With some recollection of stories which he had read, or heard, of the power of the sane man's eye, he did his best to unflinchingly meet the madman's glance.
"Give me the key of the door, at once!"
"The key? Of the door? Oh, yes! Here is the key of the door."
The Rev. Simon produced from the bosom of his cassock what looked to Philip Avalon very like a surgeon's scalpel. The weapon gleamed ominously in the madman's hand. Involuntarily the young man shrank back. His uncle noticed the gesture. His chuckling increased. He held out the knife.
"Yes, Philip, this is the key of the door. It is with this key that I unlocked the gates of the chambers of death for the seven harlots." The madman's voice sank to a whisper, a whisper of a peculiarly penetrating kind. "Philip, the Lord came to me in a dream one night, and bade me go out among the armies of the wicked and kill! kill! kill! And I arose and cried, O Lord, I will do as thou biddest me! And I have begun. The tares are ripe unto the harvest, and I have my hand upon the sickle, and I'll not stay until the whole of the harvest is reaped and cast into the fire which never shall be quenched!"
Philip Avalon found that his uncle's manner and conversation was beginning to have on him an effect which he had often heard described, but which he had never before experienced, the effect of making his blood run cold. What was he to do? It seemed to him that to attempt to grapple with a homicidal madman, while he was in the possession of such a weapon, was not an adventure to be recommended. A thought occurred to him. He moved across the room. The madman immediately moved after him.
"What are you going to do? Stand still!"