For a few moments he bent over the object he had carried; then when he straightened his body, his arm above his head brandished a flaming, sizzling torch, and he uttered the only words I had heard him speak that day. He called out to the night at large:
“Lolly, Lolly, Parson Lolly!” His voice gloated above the hiss of the torch. “Who’s the Parson? I’M THE PARSON! AND NOW I’M GOING OVER THE HILLS: PARSON LOLLY FLIES!”
The torchlight danced in his face while he laughed shrilly. Then he launched himself into the air in an enormous leap.
He fell almost but not quite clear of the sloping roof. Striking it all awry, he dashed against the roof of the bridge and on down. Mercifully, he was hurled toward the wall of the tower, and his foot caught for a second in some loop of the ivy-twine twenty feet from the ground. His swinging body struck the wall a terrific blow, and he hung head downward for a moment; his torch, which had drawn a flaming mark across the night, now blazed upward enveloping him with its flames. Only for an instant, however. The impact of the collision with the wall had stunned him, and the torch fell from his hand. The ivy gave way, and the madman, part of his clothing afire, fell insensible to the ground at our feet.
XXVI.
Blood on the Portrait
We had carried Maryvale down to the bridge, and the ambulance from the Cottage Hospital at Kington had been waiting to take the unfortunate man away. We did not know until later, of course, that Maryvale would never walk again, though the delusion which had unhinged his mind no longer held him in thrall.
Now we were returning to the House, I and the remnant of the men of the Bidding Feast. We were a straggling squad. The sense of Fate, of dark wings closing down, of stern gates clashing, swept over me again while I wondered which of us would be the next to suffer. One by one our little group reassembled in the library. There the women were waiting; there, too, stood Maryvale’s picture of the headless Parson, more enigmatic than before. Yes, even with the madman’s words ringing in our ears, none of us could believe that he had indeed been the arch-lord of disorder who may have destroyed two men.
Mrs. Belvoir, purpureal priestess, was making agitated efforts to reassemble her devotees that she might reveal the further activities of the “malignant spirit”; but the devotees were very slippery. Indeed, it was natural that after the catastrophe of Maryvale, other things should disintegrate, and although the terror spread through the House tightened the little knot of us, soon we might have wandered off to bed, unless a sudden loud knocking had been audible.
“The front door, isn’t it?” asked Miss Lebetwood.
Our host said it was, and added he wondered what the devil—