Page:The Paradise Mystery - Fletcher (1920).djvu/45

"Let Varner show you the way up there," he said. "Go quietly—don't make any fuss—the morning service is just beginning. Say nothing to anybody—just take a quiet look around, along that gallery, especially near the door there—and come back here." He looked down at the dead man again as the mason and the constable went away. "A stranger, I should think, doctor—tourist, most likely. But—thrown down! That man Varner is positive. That looks like foul play."

"Oh, there's no doubt of that!" asserted Bryce. "You'll have to go into that pretty deeply. But—the inside of the Cathedral's like a rabbit-warren, and whoever threw the man through that doorway no doubt knew how to slip away unobserved. Now, you'll have to remove the body to the mortuary, of course—but just let me fetch Dr. Ransford first. I'd like some other medical man than myself to see him before he's moved—I'll have him here in five minutes."

He turned away through the bushes and emerging upon the Close ran across the lawns in the direction of the house which he had left not twenty minutes before. He had but one idea as he ran—he wanted to see Ransford face to face with the dead man—wanted to watch him, to observe him, to see how he looked, how he behaved. Then he, Bryce, would know—something. But he was to know something before that. He opened the door of the surgery suddenly, but with his usual quietness of touch. And on the threshold he paused. Ransford, the very picture of despair, stood, just within, his face convulsed, beating one hand upon the other.