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"Your engagement was to be determined by a three months' notice on either side, or, at my will, at any time by payment of three months' salary?" "Quite right," agreed Bryce. "I remember, of course." "Then I'll give you a cheque for three months' salary now," said Ransford, and sat down again at his desk. "That will settle matters definitely and, I hope, agreeably." Bryce made no reply.
They were in such deep conversation that Bryce was close upon them before they observed his presence. When Ransford saw his late assistant, he scowled unconsciously Bryce, and the interview of the previous afternoon, had been much in his thoughts all day, and he had an uneasy feeling that Bryce was playing some game.
Mary was apparently deep in thought, and Ransford, after a glance at her, turned away and looked out of the window at the sunlit Close, thinking of the tragedy he had just witnessed. And he had become so absorbed in his thoughts of it that he started at feeling a touch on his arm and looking round saw Mary standing at his side.
"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."
Was that the real reason of the agitation in which he, Bryce, had found Ransford a few moments after the discovery of the body? There was plenty of time before him for the due solution of these mysteries, reflected Bryce and for solving another problem which might possibly have some relationship to them that of the exact connection between Ransford and his two wards.
"A banker that was his trade, sir. T'other gentleman, Mr. Ransford, he was a doctor I mind that well enough, because once when him and Mr. Brake were fishing here, Thomas Joynt's wife fell downstairs and broke her leg, and they fetched him to her he'd got it set before they'd got the reg'lar doctor out from Barthorpe yonder."
"Bryce was left alone with the dead body of Braden for some minutes, while Varner went to fetch the police. That's one." "That's true," muttered Mitchington. "He was several minutes!" "Bryce it was who discovered Collishaw in Paradise," said Ransford. "That's fact two. And fact three Bryce evidently had a motive in fetching Harker tonight to overlook your operations. What was his motive?
And soon after that I had a long illness, and for two or three years was an invalid, and well, the thing was over and done with, and, as I said just now, I have never heard anything of any of them for all these years. And now! now you tell me that there is a Mary Bewery who is a ward of a Dr. Mark Ransford at where did you say?" "At Wrychester," answered Bryce.
Ransford had taken her unwilling departure, not without several well-meaning protests, the girl bent her own energies to restoring order to her wardrobe. Nor was it an easy task. The masculine manner of the bedroom left much to be desired in those little depositories and cupboards, without which no woman can live in comfort.
And as he passed the centre table he saw old Simpson Harker, who, after sitting in attentive silence for three hours had come up to it, picked up the "History of Barthorpe" which had been found in Braden's suit-case and was inquisitively peering at its title-page. Pemberton Bryce was not the only person in Wrychester who was watching Ransford with keen attention during these events.
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