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Page 87
"Who--who?" demanded Mitchington.
Jettison leaned half-across the desk.
"Bryce!" he said in a whisper. "Bryce!"
Mitchington sat up in his chair and opened his mouth in sheer
astonishment.
"Good heavens!" he muttered after a moment's silence. "You
don't mean it?"
"Fact!" answered Jettison. "Plain, incontestable fact, my
lad. Dr. Bryce keeps an account at the Wrychester bank. On
the day I'm speaking of he cashed a cheque to self for fifty
pounds and took it all in gold."
The two men looked at each other as if each were asking his
companion a question.
"Well?" said Mitchington at last. "You're a cut above me,
Jettison. What do you make of it?"
"I said last night that the young man was playing a deep
game," replied Jettison. "But--what game? What's he building
up? For mark you, Mitchington, if--I say if, mind!--if that
fifty pounds which he drew in gold is the identical fifty paid
to Collishaw, Bryce didn't pay it as hush-money!"
"Think not?" said Mitchington, evidently surprised. "Now,
that was my first impression. If it wasn't hush-money--"
"It wasn't hush-money, for this reason," interrupted Jettison.
"We know that whatever else he knew, Bryce didn't know of the
accident to Braden until Varner fetched him to Braden. That's
established--on what you've put before me. Therefore,
whatever Collishaw saw, before or at the time that accident
happened, it wasn't Bryce who was mixed up in it. Therefore,
why should Bryce pay Collishaw hush-money?"
Mitchington, who had evidently been thinking, suddenly pulled
out a drawer in his desk and took some papers from it which he
began to turn over.
"Wait a minute," he said. "I've an abstract here--of what the
foreman at the Cathedral mason's yard told me of what he knew
as to where Collishaw was working that morning when the
accident happened--I made a note of it when I questioned him
after Collishaw's death. Here you are:
'Foreman says that on morning of Braden's accident,
Collishaw was at work in the north gallery of the
clerestory, clearing away some timber which the
carpenters had left there. Collishaw was certainly
thus engaged from nine o'clock until past eleven
that morning. Mem. Have investigated this myself.
From the exact spot where C. was clearing the timber,
there is an uninterrupted view of the gallery on the
south side of the nave, and of the arched doorway at
the head of St. Wrytha's Stair.'"
"'Well," observed Jettison, "that proves what I'm saying. It
wasn't hush-money. For whoever it was that Collishaw saw lay
hands on Braden, it wasn't Bryce--Bryce, we know, was at that
time coming across the Close or crossing that path through the
part you call Paradise: Varner's evidence proves that. So--if
the fifty pounds wasn't paid for hush-money, what was it paid
for?"
"Do you suggest anything?" asked Mitchington.
"I've thought of two or three things," answered the detective.
"One's this--was the fifty pounds paid for information? If
so, and Bryce has that information, why doesn't he show his
hand more plainly? If he bribed Collishaw with fifty pounds:
to tell him who Braden's assailant was, he now knows!--so why
doesn't he let it out, and have done with it?"
"Part of his game--if that theory's right," murmured
Mitchington.
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