The Paradise Mystery | Page 9

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.
"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.