|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 50
Bryce let the librarian go on talking and explaining, and
heard all he had to say as a man hears things in a dream--what
was really active in his own mind was joy at this unexpected
stroke of luck: he himself might have searched for many a year
and never found the last resting-place of Richard Jenkins.
And when, soon after the great clock of the Cathedral had
struck the hour of noon, he left Campany and quitted the
Library, he walked over to Paradise and plunged in amongst its
yews and cypresses, intent on seeing the Jenkins tomb for
himself. No one could suspect anything from merely seeing him
there, and all he wanted was one glance at the ancient
monument.
But Bryce was not to give even one look at Richard Jenkins's
tomb that day, nor the next, nor for many days--death met him
in another form before he had taken many steps in the quiet
enclosure where so much of Wrychester mortality lay sleeping.
From over the topmost branches of the old yew trees a great
shaft of noontide sunlight fell full on a patch of the grey
walls of the high-roofed nave. At the foot of it, his back
comfortably planted against the angle of a projecting
buttress, sat a man, evidently fast asleep in the warmth of
those powerful rays. His head leaned down and forward over
his chest, his hands were folded across his waist, his whole
attitude was that of a man who, having eaten and drunken in
the open air, has dropped off to sleep. That he had so
dropped off while in the very act of smoking was evident from
the presence of a short, well-blackened clay pipe which had
fallen from his lips and lay in the grass beside him. Near
the pipe, spread on a coloured handkerchief, were the remains
of his dinner--Bryce's quick eye noticed fragments of bread,
cheese, onions. And close by stood one of those tin bottles
in which labouring men carry their drink; its cork, tied to
the neck by a piece of string, dangled against the side. A
few yards away, a mass of fallen rubbish and a shovel and
wheelbarrow showed at what the sleeper had been working when
his dinner-hour and time for rest had arrived.
Something unusual, something curiously noticeable--yet he
could not exactly tell what--made Bryce go closer to the
sleeping man. There was a strange stillness about him--a
rigidity which seemed to suggest something more than sleep.
And suddenly, with a stifled exclamation, he bent forward and
lifted one of the folded hands. It dropped like a leaden
weight when Bryce released it, and he pushed back the man's
face and looked searchingly into it. And in that instant he
knew that for the second time within a fortnight he had found
a dead man in Wrychester Paradise.
There was no doubt whatever that the man was dead. His hands
and body were warm enough--but there was not a flicker of
breath; he was as dead as any of the folk who lay six feet
beneath the old gravestones around him. And Bryce's practised
touch and eye knew that he was only just dead--and that he had
died in his sleep. Everything there pointed unmistakably to
what had happened. The man had eaten his frugal dinner,
washed it down from his tin bottle, lighted his pipe, leaned
back in the warm sunlight, dropped asleep--and died as quietly
as a child taken from its play to its slumbers.
After one more careful look, Bryce turned and made through the
trees to the path which crossed the old graveyard. And there,
going leisurely home to lunch, was Dick Bewery, who glanced at
the young doctor inquisitively.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed with the freedom of youth towards
something not much older. "You there? Anything on?"
Then he looked more clearly, seeing Bryce to be pale and
excited. Bryce laid a hand on the lad's arm.
"Look here!" he said. "There's something wrong--again!--in
here. Run down to the police-station--get hold of
Mitchington--quietly, you understand!--bring him here at once.
If he's not there, bring somebody else--any of the police.
But--say nothing to anybody but them."
Dick gave him another swift look, turned, and ran. And
Bryce went back to the dead man--and picked up the tin bottle,
and making a cup of his left hand poured out a trickle of
the contents. Cold tea!--and, as far as he could judge,
nothing else. He put the tip of his little finger into the
weak-looking stuff, and tasted--it tasted of nothing but a
super-abundance of sugar.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|