The Paradise Mystery | Page 5

reading his letters, and Bryce turned off to that
part of the surgery in which the drugs were kept, and busied himself in
making up some prescription. Ten minutes went by in silence; then
Ransford pushed his correspondence aside, laid a paper-weight on it,
and twisting his chair round, looked at the man to whom he was going
to say some unpleasant things. Within himself he was revolving a
question--how would Bryce take it?
He had never liked this assistant of his, although he had then had him
in employment for nearly two years. There was something about
Pemberton Bryce which he did not understand and could not fathom.
He had come to him with excellent testimonials and good
recommendations; he was well up to his work, successful with patients,
thoroughly capable as a general practitioner--there was no fault to be
found with him on any professional grounds. But to Ransford his
personality was objectionable--why, he was not quite sure. Outwardly,
Bryce was rather more than presentable--a tall, good-looking man of
twenty-eight or thirty, whom some people--women especially--would
call handsome; he was the sort of young man who knows the value of
good clothes and a smart appearance, and his professional manner was
all that could be desired. But Ransford could not help distinguishing
between Bryce the doctor and Bryce the man--and Bryce the man he
did not like. Outside the professional part of him, Bryce seemed to him
to be undoubtedly deep, sly, cunning--he conveyed the impression of
being one of those men whose ears are always on the stretch, who take

everything in and give little out. There was a curious air of
watchfulness and of secrecy about him in private matters which was as
repellent--to Ransford's thinking--as it was hard to explain. Anyway, in
private affairs, he did not like his assistant, and he liked him less than
ever as he glanced at him on this particular occasion.
"I want a word with you," he said curtly. "I'd better say it now."
Bryce, who was slowly pouring some liquid from one bottle into
another, looked quietly across the room and did not interrupt himself in
his work. Ransford knew that he must have recognized a certain
significance in the words just addressed to him--but he showed no
outward sign of it, and the liquid went on trickling from one bottle to
the other with the same uniform steadiness.
"Yes?" said Bryce inquiringly. "One moment."
He finished his task calmly, put the corks in the bottles, labelled one,
restored the other to a shelf, and turned round. Not a man to be easily
startled--not easily turned from a purpose, this, thought Ransford as he
glanced at Bryce's eyes, which had a trick of fastening their gaze on
people with an odd, disconcerting persistency.
"I'm sorry to say what I must say," he began. "But--you've brought it on
yourself. I gave you a hint some time ago that your attentions were not
welcome to Miss Bewery."
Bryce made no immediate response. Instead, leaning almost carelessly
and indifferently against the table at which he had been busy with drugs
and bottles, he took a small file from his waistcoat pocket and began to
polish his carefully cut nails.
"Yes?" he said, after a pause. "Well?"
"In spite of it," continued Ransford, "you've since addressed her again
on the matter--not merely once, but twice."
Bryce put his file away, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, crossed

his feet as he leaned back against the table --his whole attitude
suggesting, whether meaningly or not, that he was very much at his
ease.
"There's a great deal to be said on a point like this," he observed. "If a
man wishes a certain young woman to become his wife, what right has
any other man--or the young woman herself, for that matter to say that
he mustn't express his desires to her?"
"None," said Ransford, "provided he only does it once--and takes the
answer he gets as final."
"I disagree with you entirely," retorted Bryce. "On the last particular, at
any rate. A man who considers any word of a woman's as being final is
a fool. What a woman thinks on Monday she's almost dead certain not
to think on Tuesday. The whole history of human relationship is on my
side there. It's no opinion--it's a fact."
Ransford stared at this frank remark, and Bryce went on, coolly and
imperturbably, as if he had been discussing a medical problem.
"A man who takes a woman's first answer as final," he continued, "is, I
repeat, a fool. There are lots of reasons why a woman shouldn't know
her own mind at the first time of asking. She may be too surprised. She
mayn't be quite decided. She may say one thing when she really