ice! what does that mean? Shall I
tell you? It means that you--you!--know that the police are wrong, and
that if you like you can prove to them that they are wrong! Now, then
isn't that so?"

"I am in possession of certain facts," began Bryce. "I--"

Mary stopped him with a look.

"My turn!" she said. "You're in possession of certain facts. Now isn't
it the truth that the facts you are in possession of are proof enough to
you that Dr. Ransford is as innocent as I am? It's no use your trying to
deceive me! Isn't that so?"

"I could certainly turn the police off his track," admitted Bryce, who
was growing highly uncomfortable. "I could divert--"

Mary gave him another look and dropping her needlework continued to
watch him steadily.

"Do you call yourself a gentleman?" she asked quietly. "Or we'll leave
the term out. Do you call yourself even decently honest? For, if you do,
how can you have the sheer impudence--more, insolence!--to come here and
tell me all this when you know that the police are wrong and that you
could--to use your own term, which is your way of putting it--turn them
off the wrong track? Whatever sort of man are you? Do you want to know
my opinion of you in plain words?"

"You seem very anxious to give it, anyway," retorted Bryce.

"I will give it, and it will perhaps put an end to this," answered Mary.
"If you are in possession of anything in the way of evidence which would
prove Dr. Ransford's innocence and you are wilfully suppressing it,
you are bad, wicked, base, cruel, unfit for any decent being's society!
And," she added, as she picked up her work and rose, "you're not going
to have any more of mine!"

"A moment!" said Bryce. He was conscious that he had somehow played all
his cards badly, and he wanted another opening. "You're misunderstanding
me altogether! I never said--never inferred--that I wouldn't save
Ransford."

"Then, if there's need, which I don't admit, you acknowledge that you
could save him?" she exclaimed sharply. "Just as I thought. Then, if
you're an honest man, a man with any pretensions to honour, why don't
you at once! Any man who had such feelings as those I've just mentioned
wouldn't hesitate one second. But you--you!--you come and--talk about
it! As if it were a game! Dr. Bryce, you make me feel sick, mentally,
morally sick."

Bryce had risen to his feet when Mary rose, and he now stood staring at
her. Ever since his boyhood he had laughed and sneered at the m