The Paradise Mystery by J. S. Fletcher (simple e reader TXT) 📗

door with his hands thrust under his coat-tails—the very picture of a benevolent, leisured gentleman who has nothing to do and is disposed to give his time to anybody. He glanced at Bryce as he had glanced at Glassdale—over the tops of his spectacles, and the glance had no more than mild inquiry in it. But if Bryce had been less excited, he would have seen that Folliot, as he beckoned him inside the garden, swept a sharp look over the Close and ascertained that there was no one about, that Bryce's entrance was unobserved. Save for a child or two, playing under the tall elms near one of the gates, and for a clerical figure that stalked a path in the far distance, the Close was empty of life. And there was no one about, either, in that part of Folliot's big garden.

“I want a bit of talk with you,” said Bryce as Folliot closed the door and turned down a side-path to a still more retired region. “Private talk. Let's go where it's quiet.”

Without replying in words to this suggestion, Folliot led the way through his rose-trees to a far corner of his grounds, where an old building of grey stone, covered with ivy, stood amongst high trees. He turned the key of a doorway and motioned Bryce to enter.

“Quiet enough in here, doctor,” he observed. “You've never seen this place—bit of a fancy of mine.”

Bryce, absorbed as he was in the thoughts of the moment, glanced cursorily at the place into which Folliot had led him. It was a square building of old stone, its walls unlined, unplastered; its floor paved with much worn flags of limestone, evidently set down in a long dead age and now polished to marble-like smoothness. In its midst, set flush with the floor, was what was evidently a trap-door, furnished with a heavy iron ring. To this Folliot pointed, with a glance of significant interest.

“Deepest well in all Wrychester under that,” he remarked. “You'd never think it—it's a hundred feet deep—and more! Dry now—water gave out some years ago. Some people would have pulled this old well-house down—but not me! I did better—I turned it to good account.” He raised a hand and pointed upward to an obviously modern ceiling of strong oak timbers. “Had that put in,” he continued, “and turned the top of the building into a little snuggery. Come up!”

He led the way to a flight of steps in one corner of the lower room, pushed open a door at their head, and showed his companion into a small apartment arranged and furnished in something closely approaching to luxury. The walls were hung with thick fabrics; the carpeting was equally thick; there were pictures, books, and curiosities; the two or three chairs were deep and big enough to lie down in; the two windows commanded pleasant views of the Cathedral towers on one side and of the Close on the other.

“Nice little place to be alone in, d'ye see?” said Folliot. “Cool in summer—warm in winter—modern fire-grate, you notice. Come here when I want to do a bit of quiet thinking, what?”

“Good place for that—certainly,” agreed Bryce.

Folliot pointed his visitor to one of the big chairs and turning to a cabinet brought out some glasses, a syphon of soda-water, and a heavy cut-glass decanter. He nodded at a box of cigars which lay open on a table at Bryce's elbow as he began to mix a couple of drinks.

“Help yourself,” he said. “Good stuff, those.”

Not until he had given Bryce a drink, and had carried his own glass to another easy chair did Folliot refer to any reason for Bryce's visit. But once settled down, he looked at him speculatively.

“What did you want to see me about?” he asked.

Bryce, who had lighted a cigar, looked across its smoke at the imperturbable face opposite.

“You've just had Glassdale here,” he observed quietly. “I saw him leave you.”

Folliot nodded—without any change of expression.

“Aye, doctor,” he said. “And—what do you know about Glassdale, now?”

Bryce, who would have cheerfully hobnobbed with a man whom he was about to conduct to the scaffold, lifted his glass and drank.

“A good deal,” he answered as he set the glass down. “The fact is—I came here to tell you so!—I know a good deal about everything.”

“A wide term!” remarked Folliot. “You've got some limitation to it, I should think. What do you mean by—everything?”

“I mean about recent matters,” replied Bryce. “I've interested myself in them—for reasons of my own. Ever since Braden was found at the foot of those stairs in Paradise, and I was fetched to him, I've interested myself. And—I've discovered a great deal—more, much more than's known to anybody.”

Folliot threw one leg over the other and began to jog his foot.

“Oh!” he said after a pause. “Dear me! And—what might you know, now, doctor? Aught you can tell me eh?”

“Lots!” answered Bryce. “I came to tell you—on seeing that Glassdale had been with you. Because—I was with Glassdale this morning.”

Folliot made no answer. But Bryce saw that his cool, almost indifferent manner was changing—he was beginning, under the surface, to get anxious.

“When I left Glassdale—at noon,” continued Bryce, “I'd no idea—and I don't think he had—that he was coming to see you. But I know what put the notion into his head. I gave him copies of those two reward bills. He no doubt thought he might make a bit—and so he came in to town, and—to you.”

“Well?” asked Folliot.

“I shouldn't wonder,” remarked Bryce, reflectively, and almost as if speaking to himself, “I shouldn't at all wonder if Glassdale's the sort of man who can be bought. He, no doubt, has his price. But all that Glassdale knows is nothing—to what I know.”

Folliot had allowed his cigar to go out. He threw it away, took a fresh one from the box, and slowly struck a match and lighted it.

“What might you know, now?” he asked after another pause.

“I've a bit of a faculty for finding things out,” answered Bryce boldly. “And I've developed it. I wanted to know all about Braden—and about who killed him—and why. There's only one way of doing all that sort of thing, you know. You've got to go back—a long way back—to the very beginnings. I went back—to the time when Braden was married. Not as Braden, of course—but as who he really was—John Brake. That was at a place called Braden Medworth, near Barthorpe, in Leicestershire.”

He paused there, watching Folliot. But Folliot showed no more than close attention, and Bryce went on.

“Not much in that—for the really important part of the story,” he continued. “But Brake had other associations with Barthorpe—a bit later. He got to know—got into close touch with a Barthorpe man who, about the time of Brake's marriage, left Barthorpe and settled in London. Brake and this man began to have some secret dealings together. There was