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"Dead!" he said in a hushed voice. "Died as we got to him. Broken all to pieces, I should say neck and spine certainly. I suppose Varner's told you what he saw." Mitchington, a sharp-eyed, dark-complexioned man, quick of movement, nodded, and after one glance at the body, looked up at the open doorway high above them. "That the door?" he asked, turning to Varner. "And it was open?"

But Varner's is a direct affirmation the other matter's a sort of ugly hint. There's a man named Collishaw, a townsman, who's been employed as a mason's labourer about the Cathedral of late. This Collishaw, it seems, was at work somewhere up in the galleries, ambulatories, or whatever they call those upper regions, on the very morning of the affair.

He had only just done this and put back the purse when he heard Varner's voice, and a second later the voice of Inspector Mitchington, a well-known police official. And at that Bryce sprang to his feet, and when the mason and his companions emerged from the bushes was standing looking thoughtfully at the dead man. He turned to Mitchington with a shake of the head.

For whoever it was that Collishaw saw lay hands on Braden, it wasn't Bryce Bryce, we know, was at that time coming across the Close or crossing that path through the part you call Paradise: Varner's evidence proves that. So if the fifty pounds wasn't paid for hush-money, what was it paid for?" "Do you suggest anything?" asked Mitchington.

The man swept his hand across his forehead as if he were dazed, and then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "A man!" he gasped. "Foot of St. Wrytha's Stair there, doctor. Dead or if not dead, near it. I saw it!" Bryce seized Varner's arm and gave it a shake. "You saw what?" he demanded. "Saw him fall. Or rather flung!" panted Varner.

And, more if Ransford's assertion were true, and if Varner's story of the hand, seen for an instant in the archway, were also true and Varner was persisting in it then, who was the man who flung Braden to his death that morning? He realized that, instead of straightening out, things were becoming more and more complicated. But he realized something else.