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Page 11
"I have nothing to say to you," answered Mary, sweeping by him
with a highly displeased lance. "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, literally 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.
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