lding. "They're just beginning the morning
service--of course, it's ten o'clock. Never mind them--go straight to
the police. Bring them back--I'll stay here."

The mason turned off towards the gateway of the Close, and while
the strains of the organ grew louder, Bryce bent over the dead man,
wondering what had really happened. Thrown from an open doorway in the
clerestory over St. Wrytha's Stair?--it seemed almost impossible! But a
sudden thought struck him: supposing two men, wishing to talk in privacy
unobserved, had gone up into the clerestory of the Cathedral--as
they easily could, by more than one door, by more than one stair--and
supposing they had quarrelled, and one of them had flung or pushed
the other through the door above--what then? And on the heels of that
thought hurried another--this man, now lying dead, had come to the
surgery, seeking Ransford, and had subsequently gone away, presumably
in search of him, and Bryce himself had just seen Ransford, obviously
agitated and pale of cheek, leaving the west porch; what did it all
mean? what was the apparently obvious inference to be drawn? Here was
the stranger dead--and Varner was ready to swear that he had seen
him thrown, flung violently, through the door forty feet above. That
was--murder! Then--who was the murderer?

Bryce looked carefully and narrowly around him. Now that Varner had gone
away, there was not a human being in sight, nor anywhere near, so far as
he knew. On one side of him and the dead man rose the grey walls of nave
and transept; on the other, the cypresses and yews rising amongst the
old tombs and monuments. Assuring himself that no one was near, no eye
watching, he slipped his hand into the inner breast pocket of the dead
man's smart morning coat. Such a man must carry papers--papers would
reveal something. And Bryce wanted to know anything--anything that would
give information and let him into whatever secret there might be between
this unlucky stranger and Ransford.

But the breast pocket was empty; there was no pocket-book there; there
were no papers there. Nor were there any papers elsewhere in the other
pockets which he hastily searched: there was not even a card with a name
on it. But he found a purse, full of money--banknotes, gold, silver--and
in one of its compartments a scrap of paper folded curiously, after the
fashion of the cocked-hat missives of another age in which envelopes had
not been invented. Bryce hurriedly unfolde