The Paradise Mystery, J. S. Fletcher [books suggested by bill gates .txt] 📗

“What do you want now?” she asked.

“To talk to you—to tell you how things are,” answered Bryce. “What harm is there in that? To make you see how matters stand, and then to show you what I can do to put things right.”

Mary glanced at an open summer-house which stood beneath the beech trees on one side of the garden. She moved towards it and sat down there, and Bryce followed her and seated himself.

“Well—” she said.

Bryce realized that his moment had arrived. He paused, endeavouring to remember the careful preparations he had made for putting his case. Somehow, he was not so clear as to his line of attack as he had been ten minutes previously—he realized that he had to deal with a young woman who was not likely to be taken in nor easily deceived. And suddenly he plunged into what he felt to be the thick of things.

“Whether you, or whether Ransford—whether both or either of you, know it or not,” he said, “the police have been on to Ransford ever since that Collishaw affair! Underground work, you know. Mitchington has been digging into things ever since then, and lately he's had a London detective helping him.”

Mary, who had carried her work into the garden, had now resumed it, and as Bryce began to talk she bent over it steadily stitching.

“Well?” she said.

“Look here!” continued Bryce. “Has it never struck you—it must have done!—that there's considerable mystery about Ransford? But whether it has struck you or not, it's there, and it's struck the police forcibly. Mystery connected with him before—long before—he ever came here. And associated, in some way, with that man Braden. Not of late—in years past. And, naturally, the police have tried to find out what that was.”

“What have they found out?” asked Mary quietly.

“That I'm not at liberty to tell,” replied Bryce. “But I can tell you this—they know, Mitchington and the London man, that there were passages between Ransford and Braden years ago.”

“How many years ago?” interrupted Mary.

Bryce hesitated a moment. He had a suspicion that this self-possessed young woman who was taking everything more quietly than he had anticipated, might possibly know more than he gave her credit for knowing. He had been watching her fingers since they sat down in the summer-house, and his sharp eyes saw that they were as steady as the spire of the cathedral above the trees—he knew from that that she was neither frightened nor anxious.

“Oh, well—seventeen to twenty years ago,” he answered. “About that time. There were passages, I say, and they were of a nature which suggests that the re-appearance of Braden on Ransford's present stage of life would be, extremely unpleasant and unwelcome to Ransford.”

“Vague!” murmured Mary. “Extremely vague!”

“But quite enough,” retorted Bryce, “to give the police the suggestion of motive. I tell you the police know quite enough to know that Braden was, of all men in the world, the last man Ransford desired to see cross his path again. And—on that morning on which the Paradise affair occurred—Braden did cross his path. Therefore, in the conventional police way of thinking and looking at things, there's motive.”

“Motive for what?” asked Mary.

Bryce arrived here at one of his critical stages, and he paused a moment in order to choose his words.

“Don't get any false ideas or impressions,” he said at last. “I'm not accusing Ransford of anything. I'm only telling you what I know the police think and are on the very edge of accusing him of. To put it plainly—of murder. They say he'd a motive for murdering Braden—and with them motive is everything. It's the first thing they seem to think of; they first question they ask themselves. 'Why should this man have murdered that man?'—do you see! 'What motive had he?—that's the point. And they think—these chaps like Mitchington and the London man—that Ransford certainly had a motive for getting rid of Braden when they met.”

“What was the motive?” asked Mary.

“They've found out something—perhaps a good deal—about what happened between Braden and Ransford some years ago,” replied Bryce. “And their theory is—if you want to know the truth—that Ransford ran away with Braden's wife, and that Braden had been looking for him ever since.”

Bryce had kept his eyes on Mary's hands, and now at last he saw the girl's fingers tremble. But her voice was steady enough when she spoke.

“Is that mere conjecture on their part, or is it based on any fact?” she asked.

“I'm not in full knowledge of all their secrets,” answered Bryce, “but I've heard enough to know that there's a basis of undeniable fact on which they're going. I know for instance, beyond doubt, that Braden and Ransford were bosom friends, years ago, that Braden was married to a girl whom Ransford had wanted to marry, that Braden's wife suddenly left him, mysteriously, a few years later, and that, at the same time, Ransford made an equally mysterious disappearance. The police know all that. What is the inference to be drawn? What inference would any one—you yourself, for example—draw?”

“None, till I've heard what Dr. Ransford had to say,” replied Mary.

Bryce disliked that ready retort. He was beginning to feel that he was being met by some force stronger than his own.

“That's all very well,” he remarked. “I don't say that I wouldn't do the same. But I'm only explaining the police position, and showing you the danger likely to arise from it. The police theory is this, as far as I can make it out: Ransford, years ago, did Braden a wrong, and Braden certainly swore revenge when he could find him. Circumstances prevented Braden from seeking him closely for some time; at last they met here, by accident. Here the police aren't decided. One theory is that there was an altercation, blows, a struggle, in the course of which Braden met his death; the other is that Ransford deliberately took Braden up into the gallery and flung him through that open doorway—”

“That,” observed Mary, with something very like a sneer, “seems so likely that I should think it would never occur to anybody but the sort of people you're telling me of! No man of any real sense would believe it for a minute!”

“Some people of plain common sense do believe it for all that!” retorted Bryce. “For it's quite possible. But as I say, I'm only repeating. And of course, the rest of it follows on that. The police theory is that Collishaw witnessed Braden's death at Ransford's hands, that Ransford got to know that Collishaw knew of that, and that he therefore quietly removed Collishaw. And it is on all that that they're going, and will go. Don't ask me if I think they're right or wrong! I'm only telling you what I know so as to show you what danger Ransford is in.”

Mary made no immediate answer, and Bryce sat watching her. Somehow—he was at a loss to explain it to himself—things were not going as he had expected. He