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

had confidently believed that the girl would be frightened, scared, upset, ready to do anything that he asked or suggested. But she was plainly not frightened. And the fingers which busied themselves with the fancy-work had become steady again, and her voice had been steady all along.

“Pray,” she asked suddenly, and with a little satirical inflection of voice which Brice was quick to notice, “pray, how is it that you—not a policeman, not a detective!—come to know so much of all this? Since when were you taken into the confidence of Mitchington and the mysterious person from London?”

“You know as well as I do that I have been dragged into the case against my wishes,” answered Bryce almost sullenly. “I was fetched to Braden—I saw him die. It was I who found Collishaw—dead. Of course, I've been mixed up, whether I would or not, and I've had to see a good deal of the police, and naturally I've learnt things.”

Mary suddenly turned on him with a flash of the eye which might have warned Bryce that he had signally failed in the main feature of his adventure.

“And what have you learnt that makes you come here and tell me all this?” she exclaimed. “Do you think I'm a simpleton, Dr. Bryce? You set out by saying that Dr. Ransford is in danger from the police, and that you know more—much more than the police! 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 mere idea of the finer feelings—he believed that every man has his price—and that honesty and honour are things useful as terms but of no real existence. And now he was wondering—really wondering—if this girl meant the things she said: if she really felt a mental loathing of such minds and purposes as he knew his own were, or if it were merely acting on her part. Before he could speak she turned on him again more fiercely than before.

“Shall I tell you something else in plain language?” she asked. “You evidently possess a very small and limited knowledge—if you have any at all!—of women, and you apparently don't rate their mental qualities at any high standard. Let me tell you that I am not quite such a fool as you seem to think me! You came here this afternoon to bargain with me! You happen to know how much I respect my guardian and what I owe him for the care he has taken of me and my brother. You thought to trade on that! You thought you could make a bargain with me; you were to save Dr. Ransford, and for reward you were to have me! You daren't deny it. Dr. Bryce—I can see through you!”

“I never said it, at any rate,” answered Bryce.

“Once more, I say, I'm not a fool!” exclaimed Mary. “I saw through you all along. And you've failed! I'm not in the least frightened by what you've said. If the police arrest Dr. Ransford, Dr. Ransford knows how to defend himself. And you're not afraid for him! You know you aren't. It wouldn't matter twopence to you if he were hanged tomorrow, for you hate him. But look to yourself! Men who cheat, and scheme, and plot, and plan as you do come to bad ends. Mind yours! Mind the wheel doesn't come full circle. And now, if you please, go away and don't dare to come near me again!”

Bryce made no answer. He had listened, with an attempt at a smile, to all this fiery indignation, but as Mary spoke the last words he was suddenly aware of something that drew his attention from her and them. Through an opening in Ransford's garden hedge he could see the garden door of the Folliots' house across the Close. And at that moment out of it emerge Folliot himself in conversation with Glassdale!

Without a word, Bryce snatched up his hat from the table of the summer-house, and went swiftly away—a new scheme, a new idea in his mind.