im to Braden. That's established--on what you've
put before me. Therefore, whatever Collishaw saw, before or at the
time that accident happened, it wasn't Bryce who was mixed up in it.
Therefore, why should Bryce pay Collishaw hush-money?"

Mitchington, who had evidently been thinking, suddenly pulled out a
drawer in his desk and took some papers from it which he began to turn
over.

"Wait a minute," he said. "I've an abstract here--of what the foreman at
the Cathedral mason's yard told me of what he knew as to where Collishaw
was working that morning when the accident happened--I made a note of it
when I questioned him after Collishaw's death. Here you are:

'Foreman says that on morning of Braden's accident,
Collishaw was at work in the north gallery of the
clerestory, clearing away some timber which the
carpenters had left there. Collishaw was certainly
thus engaged from nine o'clock until past eleven
that morning. Mem. Have investigated this myself.
From the exact spot where C. was clearing the timber,
there is an uninterrupted view of the gallery on the
south side of the nave, and of the arched doorway at
the head of St. Wrytha's Stair.'"

"'Well," observed Jettison, "that proves what I'm saying. It wasn't
hush-money. For whoever it was that Collishaw saw lay hands on Braden,
it wasn't Bryce--Bryce, we know, was at that time coming across the
Close or crossing that path through the part you call Paradise:
Varner's evidence proves that. So--if the fifty pounds wasn't paid for
hush-money, what was it paid for?"

"Do you suggest anything?" asked Mitchington.

"I've thought of two or three things," answered the detective. "One's
this--was the fifty pounds paid for information? If so, and Bryce has
that information, why doesn't he show his hand more plainly? If he
bribed Collishaw with fifty pounds: to tell him who Braden's assailant
was, he now knows!--so why doesn't he let it out, and have done with
it?"

"Part of his game--if that theory's right," murmured Mitchington.

"It mayn't be right," said Jettison. "But it's one. And there's
another--supposing he paid Collishaw that money on behalf of somebody
else? I've thought this business out right and left, top-side and
bottom-side, and hang me if I don't feel certain there is somebody else!
What did Ransford tell us about Bryce and this old Harker--think
of that! And yet, according to Bryce, Harker is one of our old Yard
men!