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There was no explanation of what it meant to be had from the man whom Bryce and Harker and Dick Bewery secretly watched from behind the screen of cypress trees. Four of them watched in silence, or with no more than a whispered word now and then while the fifth worked. This man worked methodically, replacing each stone as he took it up and examined the soil beneath it.
"If you do know anything about the Braden affair why not reveal it, and be done with the whole thing," suggested Bryce. "That would finish matters." Ransford took a long, silent look at his questioner. And Bryce looked steadily back and Mary Bewery anxiously watched both men. "That's my business," said Ransford at last. "I'm neither to be coerced, bullied, or cajoled.
She had no desire to discuss the Paradise mysteries with anybody, especially after Ransford's assurance of the previous evening. But in the middle of the afternoon in walked Mrs. Folliot, a rare caller, and before she had been closeted with Mary five minutes brought up the subject again. "I want to speak to you on a very serious matter, my dear Miss Bewery," she said.
In any case, in the opinion of the elderly ladies who set the tone of society in Wrychester, Miss Bewery was much too young, and far too pretty, to be left without a chaperon. But, up to then, no one had dared to say as much to Dr. Ransford instead, everybody said it freely behind his back. Bryce had used eyes and ears in relation to the two young people.
"I'll repeat what I've just said," he answered. "What do you mean by that?" "I hear things," said Bryce. "People will talk even a doctor can't refuse to hear what gossiping and garrulous patients say. Since she came to you from school, a year ago, Wrychester people have been much interested in Miss Bewery, and in her brother, too.
Mary Bewery, a young woman of more than usual powers of observation and penetration, had been quick to see that her guardian's distress over the affair in Paradise was something out of the common.
He was a close friend of mine when we were young men in London; he a bank manager; I, just beginning my work. We used to spend our holidays together in Leicestershire. There we met your mother, whose name was Mary Bewery. He married her; I was his best man. They went to live in London, and from that time I did not see so much of them, only now and then.
Elaborate as the toils were which he had laid out for Ransford to the police, he could sweep them up and tear them away with a sentence of added knowledge if Mary Bewery made it worth his while. But first before coming to the critical point there was yet certain information which he desired to get, and he felt sure of getting it if he could find Glassdale.
By fair means, or foul he himself ignored the last word and would have substituted the term skilful for it Pemberton Bryce meant to have Mary Bewery. Mary Bewery herself had no thought of Bryce in her head when, the morning after that worthy's return to Wrychester, she set out, alone, for the Wrychester Golf Club.
Sometimes all three were there at the same moment; sometimes Ransford was half an hour late; the one member who was always there to the moment was Dick Bewery, who fortified himself sedulously after his morning's school labours. On this particular day all three met in the dining-room at once, and sat down together.
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