The Greatest Works of J. S. Fletcher (64+ Titles in One Illustrated Edition). J. S. Fletcher

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СКАЧАТЬ anybody! A mere departure—till I turn up again.”

      But Bryce was not to get away from the old house without something in the nature of a farewell. As he walked out of the surgery by the side entrance, Mary Bewery, who had just parted from young Bonham in the garden and was about to visit her dogs in the stable yard, came along: she and Bryce met, face to face. The girl flushed, not so much from embarrassment as from vexation; Bryce, cool as ever, showed no sign of any embarrassment. Instead, he laughed, tapping the hand-bag which he carried under one arm.

      “Summarily turned out—as if I had been stealing the spoons,” he remarked. “I go—with my small belongings. This is my first reward—for devotion.”

      “I have nothing to say to you,” answered Mary, sweeping by him with a highly displeased glance. “Except that you have brought it on yourself.”

      “A very feminine retort!” observed Bryce. “But—there is no malice in it? Your anger won’t last more than—shall we say a day?”

      “You may say what you like,” she replied. “As I just said, I have nothing to say—now or at any time.”

      “That remains to be proved,” remarked Bryce. “The phrase is one of much elasticity. But for the present—I go!”

      He walked out into the Close, and without as much as a backward look struck off across the sward in the direction in which, ten minutes before, he had sent the strange man. He had rooms in a quiet lane on the farther side of the Cathedral precinct, and his present intention was to go to them to leave his bag and make some further arrangements. He had no idea of leaving Wrychester—he knew of another doctor in the city who was badly in need of help: he would go to him—would tell him, if need be, why he had left Ransford. He had a multiplicity of schemes and ideas in his head, and he began to consider some of them as he stepped out of the Close into the ancient enclosure which all Wrychester folk knew by its time-honoured name of Paradise. This was really an outer court of the old cloisters; its high walls, half-ruinous, almost wholly covered with ivy, shut in an expanse of turf, liberally furnished with yew and cypress and studded with tombs and gravestones. In one corner rose a gigantic elm; in another a broken stairway of stone led to a doorway set high in the walls of the nave; across the enclosure itself was a pathway which led towards the houses in the south-east corner of the Close. It was a curious, gloomy spot, little frequented save by people who went across it rather than follow the gravelled paths outside, and it was untenanted when Bryce stepped into it. But just as he walked through the archway he saw Ransford. Ransford was emerging hastily from a postern door in the west porch—so hastily that Bryce checked himself to look at him. And though they were twenty yards apart, Bryce saw that Ransford’s face was very pale, almost to whiteness, and that he was unmistakably agitated. Instantly he connected that agitation with the man who had come to the surgery door.

      “They’ve met!” mused Bryce, and stopped, staring after Ransford’s retreating figure. “Now what is it in that man’s mere presence that’s upset Ransford? He looks like a man who’s had a nasty, unexpected shock—a bad ‘un!”

      He remained standing in the archway, gazing after the retreating figure, until Ransford had disappeared within his own garden; still wondering and speculating, but not about his own affairs, he turned across Paradise at last and made his way towards the farther corner. There was a little wicket-gate there, set in the ivied wall; as Bryce opened it, a man in the working dress of a stone-mason, whom he recognized as being one of the master-mason’s staff, came running out of the bushes. His face, too, was white, and his eyes were big with excitement. And recognizing Bryce, he halted, panting.

      “What is it, Varner?” asked Bryce calmly. “Something happened?”

      The man swept his hand across his forehead as if he were dazed, and then jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

      “A man!” he gasped. “Foot of St. Wrytha’s Stair there, doctor. Dead—or if not dead, near it. I saw it!”

      Bryce seized Varner’s arm and gave it a shake.

      “You saw—what?” he demanded.

      “Saw him—fall. Or rather—flung!” panted Varner. “Somebody—couldn’t see who, nohow—flung him right through yon doorway, up there. He fell right over the steps—crash!” Bryce looked over the tops of the yews and cypresses at the doorway in the clerestory to which Varner pointed—a low, open archway gained by the half-ruinous stair. It was forty feet at least from the ground.

      “You saw him—thrown!” he exclaimed. “Thrown—down there? Impossible, man!”

      “Tell you I saw it!” asserted Varner doggedly. “I was looking at one of those old tombs yonder—somebody wants some repairs doing—and the jackdaws were making such a to-do up there by the roof I glanced up at them. And I saw this man thrown through that door—fairly flung through it! God!—do you think I could mistake my own eyes?”

      “Did you see who flung him?” asked Bryce.

      “No; I saw a hand—just for one second, as it might be—by the edge of the doorway,” answered Varner. “I was more for watching him! He sort of tottered for a second on the step outside the door, turned over and screamed—I can hear it now!—and crashed down on the flags beneath.”

      “How long since?” demanded Bryce.

      “Five or six minutes,” said Varner. “I rushed to him—I’ve been doing what I could. But I saw it was no good, so I was running for help—”

      Bryce pushed him towards the bushes by which they were standing.

      “Take me to him,” he said. “Come on!”

      Varner turned back, making a way through the cypresses. He led Bryce to the foot of the great wall of the nave. There in the corner formed by the angle of nave and transept, on a broad pavement of flagstones, lay the body of a man crumpled up in a curiously twisted position. And with one glance, even before he reached it, Bryce knew what body it was—that of the man who had come, shyly and furtively, to Ransford’s door.

      “Look!” exclaimed Varner, suddenly pointing. “He’s stirring!”

      Bryce, whose gaze was fastened on the twisted figure, saw a slight movement which relaxed as suddenly as it had occurred. Then came stillness. “That’s the end!” he muttered. “The man’s dead! I’ll guarantee that before I put a hand on him. Dead enough!” he went on, as he reached the body and dropped on one knee by it. “His neck’s broken.”

      The mason bent down and looked, half-curiously, half-fearfully, at the dead man. Then he glanced upward—at the open door high above them in the walls.

      “It’s a fearful drop, that, sir,” he said. “And he came down with such violence. You’re sure it’s over with him?”

      “He died just as we came up,” answered Bryce. “That movement we saw was the last effort—involuntary, of course. Look here, Varner!—you’ll have to get help. You’d better fetch some of the cathedral people—some of the vergers. No!” he broke off suddenly, as the low strains of an organ came from within the great building. “They’re just beginning the morning service—of course, it’s ten o’clock. Never mind them—go straight to the police. Bring them back—I’ll stay here.”

      The mason turned off towards the gateway of the Close, and while the strains of the organ grew louder, Bryce bent over the dead man, wondering what had СКАЧАТЬ