When Bryce came hurrying up to him, Folliot was standing at his garden
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 another man in with them, too--a man who was a sort of partner
of the Barthorpe man's. Brake had evidently a belief in these men, and
he trusted them--unfortunately for himself he sometimes trusted the
bank's money to them. I know what happened--he used to let them have
money for short financial transactions--to be refunded within a very
brief space. But--he went to the fire too often, and got his fingers
burned in the end. The two men did him--one of them in particular--and
cleared out. He had to stand the racket. He stood it--to the tune of ten
years' penal servitude. And, naturally, when he'd finished his time, he
wanted to find those two men--and began a long search for them. Like to
know the names of the men, Mr. Folliot?”
“You might mention 'em--if you know 'em,” answered Folliot.
“The name of the particular one was Wraye--Falkiner Wraye,” replied
Bryce promptly. “Of the other--the man of lesser importance--Flood.”
The two men looked quietly at each other for a full moment's silence.
And it was Bryce who first spoke with a ring of confidence in his tone
which showed that he knew he had the whip hand.
“Shall I tell you something about Falkiner Wraye?” he asked. “I
will!--it's deeply interesting. Mr. Falkiner Wraye, after cheating
and deceiving Brake, and leaving him to pay the penalty of his
over-trustfulness, cleared out of England and carried his money-making
talents to foreign parts. He succeeded in doing well--he would!--and
eventually he came back and married a rich widow and settled himself
down in an out-of-the-world English town to grow roses. You're Falkiner
Wraye, you know, Mr. Folliot!”
Bryce laughed as he made this direct accusation, and sitting forward in
his chair, pointed first to Folliot's face and then to his left hand.
“Falkiner Wraye,” he said, “had an unfortunate gun accident in his youth
which marked him for life. He lost the middle finger of his left hand,
and he got a bad scar on his left jaw. There they are, those marks!
Fortunate for you, Mr. Folliot, that the police don't know all that I
know, for if they did, those marks would have done for you days ago!”
For a minute or two Folliot sat joggling his leg--a bad sign in him of
rising temper if Bryce had but known it. While he remained silent he
watched Bryce narrowly, and when he spoke, his voice was calm as ever.
“And what use do you intend to put your knowledge to, if one may ask?”
he inquired, half sneeringly. “You said just now that you'd no doubt
that man Glassdale could be bought, and I'm inclining to think that
you're one of those men that have their price. What is it?”
“We've not come to that,” retorted Bryce. “You're a bit mistaken. If I
have my price, it's not in the same commodity that Glassdale would want.
But before we do any talking about that sort of thing, I want to add to
my stock of knowledge. Look here! We'll be candid. I don't care a snap
of my fingers that Brake, or Braden's dead, or that Collishaw's dead,
nor if one had his neck broken and the other was poisoned, but--whose
hand was that which the mason, Varner, saw that morning, when Brake was
flung out of that doorway? Come, now!--whose?”
“Not mine, my lad!” answered Folliot, confidently. “That's a fact?”
Bryce hesitated, giving Folliot a searching look. And Folliot nodded
solemnly. “I tell you, not mine!” he repeated. “I'd naught to do with
it!”
“Then who had?” demanded Bryce. “Was it the other man--Flood? And if so,
who is Flood?”
Folliot got up from his chair and, cigar between his lips and hands
under the tails of his old coat, walked silently about the quiet room
for awhile. He was evidently thinking deeply, and Bryce made no attempt
to disturb him. Some minutes went by before Folliot took the cigar from
his lips and leaning against the chimneypiece looked fixedly at his
visitor.
“Look here, my lad!” he said, earnestly. “You're no doubt, as you say, a
good hand at finding things out, and you've doubtless done a good bit of
ferreting, and done it well enough in your own opinion. But there's
one thing you can't find out, and the police can't find out either, and
that's the precise truth about Braden's death. I'd no hand in it--it
couldn't be fastened on to me, anyhow.”
Bryce looked up and interjected one word.
“Collishaw?”
“Nor that, neither,” answered Folliot, hastily. “Maybe I know something
about both, but neither you nor the police nor anybody could fasten me
to either matter! Granting all you say to be true, where's the positive
truth?”
“What about circumstantial evidence,” asked Bryce.
“You'd have a job to get it,” retorted Folliot. “Supposing that all you
say is true about--about past matters? Nothing can prove--nothing!--that
I ever met Braden that morning. On the other hand, I can prove, easily,
that I never did meet him; I can account for every minute of my time
that day. As to the other affair--not an ounce of direct evidence!”
“Then--it was the other man!” exclaimed Bryce. “Now then, who is he?”
Folliot replied with a shrewd glance.
“A man who by giving away another man gave himself away would be a
damned fool!” he answered. “If there is another man--”
“As if there must be!” interrupted Bryce.
“Then he's safe!” concluded Folliot. “You'll get nothing from me about
him!”
“And nobody can get at you except through him?” asked Bryce.
“That's about it,” assented Folliot laconically.
Bryce laughed cynically.
“A pretty coil!” he said with a sneer. “Here! You talked about my price.
I'm quite content to hold my tongue if you'd tell me something about
what happened seventeen years ago.”
“What?” asked Folliot.
“You knew Brake, you must have known his family affairs,” said Bryce.
“What became of Brake's wife and children when he went to prison?”
Folliot shook his head, and it was plain to Bryce that his gesture of
dissent was genuine.
“You're wrong,” he answered. “I never at any time knew anything of
Brake's family affairs. So little indeed, that I never even knew he was
married.”
Bryce rose to his feet and stood staring.
“What!” he exclaimed. “You mean to tell me that, even now, you don't
know that Brake had two children, and that--that--oh, it's incredible!”
“What's incredible?” asked Folliot. “What are you talking about?”
Bryce in his eagerness and surprise grasped Folliot's arm and shook it.
“Good heavens, man!” he said. “Those two wards of Ransford's are Brake's
girl and boy! Didn't you know that, didn't you?”
“Never!” answered Folliot. “Never! And who's Ransford, then? I never
heard Brake speak of any Ransford! What game is all this? What--”
Before Bryce could reply, Folliot suddenly started, thrust his companion
aside and went to one of the windows. A sharp exclamation from him took
Bryce to his side. Folliot lifted a shaking hand and pointed into the
garden.
“There!” he whispered. “Hell and--What's this mean?”
Bryce looked in the direction pointed out. Behind the pergola of rambler
roses the figures of men were coming towards the old well-house led by
one of Folliot's gardeners. Suddenly they emerged into full view, and
in front of the rest was Mitchington and close behind him the detective,
and behind him--Glassdale!