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Page 12
"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 really happened. Thrown from
an open doorway in the clerestory over St. Wrytha's Stair?--it
seemed almost impossible! But a sudden thought struck him
supposing two men, wishing to talk in privacy unobserved, had
gone up into the clerestory of the Cathedral--as they easily
could, by more than one door, by more than one stair--and
supposing they had quarrelled, and one of them had flung or
pushed the other through the door above--what then? And on
the heels of that thought hurried another--this man, now lying
dead, had come to the surgery, seeking Ransford, and had
subsequently gone away, presumably in search of him, and Bryce
himself had just seen Ransford, obviously agitated and pale of
cheek, leaving the west porch; what did it all mean? what was
the apparently obvious inference to be drawn? Here was the
stranger dead--and Varner was ready to swear that he had seen
him thrown, flung violently, through the door forty feet
above. That was--murder! Then--who was the murderer?
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