idn't return
until a few minutes after eleven. Now, then, where did he go?"

"I suppose you're trying to find that out?" asked Bryce, after a pause,
during which the listeners heard the caller rise and make for the door.

"Of course!" replied Mitchington, with a confident laugh. "And--I shall!
Keep it to yourself, doctor."

When Bryce had let the inspector out and returned to his sitting-room,
Ransford and Mary had come from behind the curtains. He looked at them
and shook his head.

"You heard--a good deal, you see," he observed.

"Look here!" said Ransford peremptorily. "You put that man off about the
call at my surgery. You didn't tell him the truth."

"Quite right," assented Bryce. "I didn't. Why should I?"

"What did Braden ask you?" demanded Ransford. "Come, now?"

"Merely if Dr. Ransford was in," answered Bryce, "remarking that he had
once known a Dr. Ransford. That was--literally--all. I replied that you
were not in."

Ransford stood silently thinking for a moment or two. Then he moved
towards the door.

"I don't see that any good will come of more talk about this," he said.
"We three, at any rate, know this--I never saw Braden when he came to my
house."

Then he motioned Mary to follow him, and they went away, and Bryce,
having watched them out of sight, smiled at himself in his mirror--with
full satisfaction.

CHAPTER XII. MURDER OF THE MASON'S LABOURER

It was towards noon of the very next day that Bryce made a forward step
in the matter of solving the problem of Richard Jenkins and his tomb
in Paradise. Ever since his return from Barthorpe he had been making
attempts to get at the true meaning of this mystery. He had paid so
many visits to the Cathedral Library that Ambrose Campany had asked him
jestingly if he was going in for archaeology; Bryce had replied that
having nothing to do just then he saw no reason why he shouldn't improve
his knowledge of the antiquities of Wrychester. But he was scrupulously
careful not to let the librarian know the real object of his prying and
peeping into the old books and documents. Campany, as Bryce was very
well aware, was a walking encyclopaedia of information about Wrychester
Cathedral: he was, in fact, at that time, engaged in completing a
history of it. And it was through that history that Bryce accidentally
got his precious information. For on the day following the interview
with Mary Bewery and Ransford, Bryce being in the library was treated