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Page 41
Mary Bewery herself had no thought of Bryce in her head when,
the morning after that worthy's return to Wrychester, she set
out, alone, for the Wrychester Golf Club. It was her habit to
go there almost every day, and Bryce was well acquainted with
her movements and knew precisely where to waylay her. And
empty of Bryce though her mind was, she was not surprised
when, at a lonely place on Wrychester Common, Bryce turned the
corner of a spinny and met her face to face.
Mary would have passed on with no more than a silent
recognition--she had made up her mind to have no further
speech with her guardian's dismissed assistant. But she had
to pass through a wicket gate at that point, and Bryce barred
the way, with unmistakable purpose. It was plain to the girl
that he had laid in wait for her. She was not without a
temper of her own, and she suddenly let it out on the
offender.
"Do you call this manly conduct, Dr. Bryce?" she demanded,
turning an indignant and flushed face on him. "To waylay me
here, when you know that I don't want to have anything more to
do with you. Let me through, please--and go away!"
But Bryce kept a hand on the little gate, and when he spoke
there was that in his voice which made the girl listen in
spite of herself.
"I'm not here on my own behalf," he said quickly. "I give you
my word I won't say a thing that need offend you. It's true I
waited here for you--it's the only place in which I thought I
could meet you, alone. I want to speak to you. It's this--do
you know your guardian is in danger?"
Bryce had the gift of plausibility--he could convince people,
against their instincts, even against their wills, that he was
telling the truth. And Mary, after a swift glance, believed
him.
"What danger?" she asked. "And if he is, and if you know he
is--why don't you go direct to him?"
"The most fatal thing in the world to do!" exclaimed Bryce.
"You know him--he can be nasty. That would bring matters to a
crisis. And that, in his interest, is just what mustn't
happen."
"I don't understand you," said Mary.
Bryce leaned nearer to her--across the gate.
"You know what happened last week," he said in a low voice.
"The strange death of that man--Braden."
"Well?" she asked, with a sudden look of uneasiness. "What of
it?"
"It's being rumoured--whispered--in the town that Dr. Ransford
had something to do with that affair," answered Bryce.
"Unpleasant--unfortunate--but it's a fact."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Mary with a heightening colour. "What
could he have to do with it? What could give rise to such
foolish--wicked--rumours?"
"You know as well as I do how people talk, how they will
talk," said Bryce. "You can't stop them, in a place like
Wrychester, where everybody knows everybody. There's a
mystery around Braden's death--it's no use denying it. Nobody
knows who he was, where he came from, why he came. And it's
being hinted--I'm only telling you what I've gathered--that
Dr. Ransford knows more than he's ever told. There are, I'm
afraid, grounds."
"What grounds?" demanded Mary. While Bryce had been speaking,
in his usual slow, careful fashion, she had been reflecting
--and remembering Ransford's evident agitation at the time of
the Paradise affair--and his relief when the inquest was over
--and his sending her with flowers to the dead man's grave
and she began to experience a sense of uneasiness and even of
fear. "What grounds can there be?" she added. "Dr. Ransford
didn't know that man--had never seen him!"
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