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

watching his man narrowly, while the detective approached him closely on the other side. “I want you and a word with you at once. Your real name is Flood! What have you to say to that? And—it's no use beating about the bush—what have you to say about this Braden affair, and your share with Folliot in it, whose real name is Wraye. It's all come out about the two of you. If you've anything to say, you'd better say it.”

The verger, whose black gown lay thrown across the back of a chair, looked from one face to another with frightened eyes. It was very evident that the suddenness of the descent had completely unnerved him. Ransford's practised eyes saw that he was on the verge of a collapse.

“Give him time, Mitchington,” he said. “Pull yourself together,” he added, turning to the man. “Don't be frightened; answer these questions!”

“For God's sake, gentlemen!” grasped the verger. “What—what is it? What am I to answer? Before God, I'm as innocent as—as any of you—about Mr. Brake's death! Upon my soul and honour I am!”

“You know all about it;” insisted Mitchington.

“Come, now, isn't it true that you're Flood, and that Folliot's Wraye, the two men whose trick on him got Brake convicted years ago? Answer that!”

Flood looked from one side to the other. He was leaning against his tea-table, set in the middle of his tidy living room. From the hearth his kettle sent out a pleasant singing that sounded strangely in contrast with the grim situation.

“Yes, that's true,” he said at last. “But in that affair I—I wasn't the principal. I was only—only Wraye's agent, as it were: I wasn't responsible. And when Mr. Brake came here, when I met him that morning—”

He paused, still looking from one to another of his audience as if entreating their belief.

“As sure as I'm a living man, gentlemen!” he suddenly burst out, “I'd no willing hand in Mr. Brake's death! I'll tell you the exact truth; I'll take my oath of it whenever you like. I'd have been thankful to tell, many a time, but for—for Wraye. He wouldn't let me at first, and afterwards it got complicated. It was this way. That morning—when Mr. Brake was found dead—I had occasion to go up into that gallery under the clerestory. I suddenly came on him face to face. He recognized me. And—I'm telling you the solemn, absolute truth, gentlemen!—he'd no sooner recognized me than he attacked me, seizing me by the arm. I hadn't recognized him at first, I did when he laid hold of me. I tried to shake him off, tried to quiet him; he struggled—I don't know what he wanted to do—he began to cry out—it was a wonder he wasn't heard in the church below, and he would have been only the organ was being played rather loudly. And in the struggle he slipped—it was just by that open doorway—and before I could do more than grasp at him, he shot through the opening and fell! It was sheer, pure accident, gentlemen! Upon my soul, I hadn't the least intention of harming him.”

“And after that?” asked Mitchington, at the end of a brief silence.

“I saw Mr. Folliot—Wraye,” continued Flood. “Just afterwards, that was. I told him; he bade me keep silence until we saw how things went. Later he forced me to be silent. What could I do? As things were, Wraye could have disclaimed me—I shouldn't have had a chance. So I held my tongue.”

“Now, then, Collishaw?” demanded Mitchington. “Give us the truth about that. Whatever the other was, that was murder!”

Flood lifted his hand and wiped away the perspiration that had gathered on his face.

“Before God, gentlemen!” he answered. “I know no more—at least, little more—about that than you do! I'll tell you all I do know. Wraye and I, of course, met now and then and talked about this. It got to our ears at last that Collishaw knew something. My own impression is that he saw what occurred between me and Mr. Brake—he was working somewhere up there. I wanted to speak to Collishaw. Wraye wouldn't let me, he bade me leave it to him. A bit later, he told me he'd squared Collishaw with fifty pounds—”

Mitchington and the detective exchanged looks.

“Wraye—that's Folliot—paid Collishaw fifty pounds, did he?” asked the detective.

“He told me so,” replied Flood. “To hold his tongue. But I'd scarcely heard that when I heard of Collishaw's sudden death. And as to how that happened, or who—who brought it about—upon my soul, gentlemen, I know nothing! Whatever I may have thought, I never mentioned it to Wraye—never! I—I daren't! You don't know what a man Wraye is! I've been under his thumb most of my life and—and what are you going to do with me, gentlemen?”

Mitchington exchanged a word or two with the detective, and then, putting his head out of the door beckoned to the policeman to whom he had spoken at the end of the lane and who now appeared in company with a fellow-constable. He brought both into the cottage.

“Get your tea,” he said sharply to the verger. “These men will stop with you—you're not to leave this room.” He gave some instructions to the two policemen in an undertone and motioned Ransford and the others to follow him. “It strikes me,” he said, when they were outside in the narrow lane, “that what we've just heard is somewhere about the truth. And now we'll go on to Folliot's—there's a way to his house round here.”

Mrs. Folliot was out, Sackville Bonham was still where Bryce had left him, at the golf-links, when the pursuers reached Folliot's. A parlourmaid directed them to the garden; a gardener volunteered the suggestion that his master might be in the old well-house and showed the way. And Folliot and Bryce saw them coming and looked at each other.

“Glassdale!” exclaimed Bryce. “By heaven, man!—he's told on you!”

Folliot was still staring through the window. He saw Ransford and Harker following the leading figures. And suddenly he turned to Bryce.

“You've no hand in this?” he demanded.

“I?” exclaimed Bryce. “I never knew till just now!”

Folliot pointed to the door.

“Go down!” he said. “Let 'em in, bid 'em come up! I'll—I'll settle with 'em. Go!”

Bryce hurried down to the lower apartment. He was filled with excitement—an unusual thing for him—but in the midst of it, as he made for the outer door, it suddenly struck him that all his schemings and plottings were going for nothing. The truth was at hand, and it was not going to benefit him in the slightest degree. He was beaten.

But that was no time for philosophic reflection; already those outside were beating at the door. He flung it open, and the foremost men started in surprise at the sight of him. But Bryce bent forward to Mitchington—anxious to play a part to the last.

“He's upstairs!” he whispered. “Up there! He'll bluff it out if he can, but he's just admitted to me—”

Mitchington thrust Bryce aside, almost roughly.