Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
"I shouldn't wonder," remarked Bryce, reflectively, and almost as if speaking to himself, "I shouldn't at all wonder if Glassdale's the sort of man who can be bought. He, no doubt, has his price. But all that Glassdale knows is nothing to what I know." Folliot had allowed his cigar to go out. He threw it away, took a fresh one from the box, and slowly struck a match and lighted it.
It was close on five o'clock when Glassdale, leaving Folliot at his garden door, turned the corner into the quietness of the Precincts. He walked about there a while, staring at the queer old houses with eyes which saw neither fantastic gables nor twisted chimneys. Glassdale was thinking.
For Glassdale, according to all accounts, had known Braden intimately of late years, and was most likely in possession of facts about him and Bryce had full confidence in himself as an interviewer of other men and a supreme belief that he could wheedle a secret out of anybody with whom he could procure an hour's quiet conversation.
Bryce fell into one of his fits of musing. What could be the meaning of this extraordinary silence on Brake's part? Was there still some hidden secret, some other mystery at which he had not yet guessed? "Odd!" he remarked at last after a long pause during which Glassdale had watched him curiously. "But, did he ever speak to you of an old friend of his named Ransford a doctor?"
Who may you be, now?" "My name, sir, is Glassdale," answered the other. "I've just come from your solicitor's. I called to see him this afternoon and he told me that the business I called about could only be dealt with or discussed with you. So I came here." Folliot, who had been cutting slips off a rose-tree, closed his knife and put it away in his old jacket.
And now," he continued, as Glassdale accompanied him to a rustic bench set beneath a pergola of rambler roses, "who are you, like? I read a queer account in this morning's local paper of what happened in the Cathedral grounds yonder last night, and there was a person of your name mentioned. Are you that Glassdale?" "The same, Mr. Folliot," answered the visitor, promptly.
"Aye, and from what I read, they never followed his movements that morning!" observed Glassdale. "Queer business altogether! Isn't there some reward offered, doctor? I heard of some placards or something, but I've never seen them; of course, I've only been here since yesterday morning." Bryce silently drew some papers from his pocket.
"The particular one he believed to be in Australia, until near the end, when he got an idea that he'd left for England; as for the other, he didn't bother much about him. But the man that he did want! ah, he wanted him badly!" "Who was that man?" asked Bryce. "A man of the name of Falkiner Wraye," answered Glassdale promptly. "A man he'd known in London.
But it was no good I never either saw or heard of Wraye and Brake came to the conclusion he'd left Australia. And I know he hoped to get news of him, somehow, when we returned to England." "That description, now? what was it?" asked Bryce. "Oh!" said Glassdale. "I can't remember it all, now big man, clean shaven, nothing very particular except one thing.
"I shouldn't wonder," replied Glassdale. "And if it is made worth my while." Folliot mused a little. Then he tapped Glassdale's elbow. "You see," he said, confidentially, "it might be, you know, that I had a little purpose of my own in offering that reward. It might be that it was a very particular friend of mine that had the misfortune to have incurred this man Braden's hatred.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking