re thinking to get a strong case
against Ransford, you've got your work set. He gave your theory a nasty
knock this morning by his few words about that pill. Did Coates and
Everest find a pill, now?"

"Not at liberty to say, sir," answered Mitchington. "At present, anyway.
Um! I dislike these private offers of reward--it means that those who
make 'em get hold of information which is kept back from us, d'you see!
They're inconvenient."

Then he went away, and Bryce, after waiting awhile, until night had
settled down, slipped quietly out of the house and set off for the gloom
of Paradise.

CHAPTER XVI. BEFOREHAND

In accordance with his undeniable capacity for contriving and scheming,
Bryce had made due and careful preparations for his visit to the tomb
of Richard Jenkins. Even in the momentary confusion following upon his
discovery of Collishaw's dead body, he had been sufficiently alive to
his own immediate purposes to notice that the tomb--a very ancient and
dilapidated structure--stood in the midst of a small expanse of stone
pavement between the yew-trees and the wall of the nave; he had noticed
also that the pavement consisted of small squares of stone, some
of which bore initials and dates. A sharp glance at the presumed
whereabouts of the particular spot which he wanted, as indicated in the
scrap of paper taken from Braden's purse, showed him that he would have
to raise one of those small squares--possibly two or three of them.
And so he had furnished himself with a short crowbar of tempered steel,
specially purchased at the iron-monger's, and with a small bull's-eye
lantern. Had he been arrested and searched as he made his way towards
the cathedral precincts he might reasonably have been suspected of a
design to break into the treasury and appropriate the various ornaments
for which Wrychester was famous. But Bryce feared neither arrest nor
observation. During his residence in Wrychester he had done a good deal
of prowling about the old city at night, and he knew that Paradise, at
any time after dark, was a deserted place. Folk might cross from the
close archway to the wicket-gate by the outer path, but no one would
penetrate within the thick screen of yew and cypress when night had
fallen. And now, in early summer, the screen of trees and bushes was so
thick in leaf, that once within it, foliage on one side, the great walls
of the nave on the other, there was little likelihood of any person
overlook