“Shall I tell you something else in plain language?” she asked. “You evidently possess a very small and limited knowledge—if you have any at all!—of women, and you apparently don’t rate their mental qualities at any high standard. Let me tell you that I am not quite such a fool as you seem to think me! You came here this afternoon to bargain with me! You happen to know how much I respect my guardian and what I owe him for the care he has taken of me and my brother. You thought to trade on that! You thought you could make a bargain with me; you were to save Dr. Ransford, and for reward you were to have me! You daren’t deny it. Dr. Bryce—I can see through you!”
“I never said it, at any rate,” answered Bryce.
“Once more, I say, I’m not a fool!” exclaimed Mary. “I saw through you all along. And you’ve failed! I’m not in the least frightened by what you’ve said. If the police arrest Dr. Ransford, Dr. Ransford knows how to defend himself. And you’re not afraid for him! You know you aren’t. It wouldn’t matter twopence to you if he were hanged tomorrow, for you hate him. But look to yourself! Men who cheat, and scheme, and plot, and plan as you do come to bad ends. Mind yours! Mind the wheel doesn’t come full circle. And now, if you please, go away and don’t dare to come near me again!”
Bryce made no answer. He had listened, with an attempt at a smile, to all this fiery indignation, but as Mary spoke the last words he was suddenly aware of something that drew his attention from her and them. Through an opening in Ransford’s garden hedge he could see the garden door of the Folliots’ house across the Close. And at that moment out of it emerge Folliot himself in conversation with Glassdale!
Without a word, Bryce snatched up his hat from the table of the summerhouse, and went swiftly away—a new scheme, a new idea in his mind.
XXIV
Finesse
Glassdale, journeying into Wrychester half an hour after Bryce had left him at the Saxonsteade Arms, occupied himself during his ride across country in considering the merits of the two handbills which Bryce had given him. One announced an offer of five hundred pounds reward for information in the Braden-Collishaw matter; the other, of a thousand pounds. It struck him as a curious thing that two offers should be made—it suggested, at once, that more than one person was deeply interested in this affair. But who were they?—no answer to that question appeared on the handbills, which were, in each case, signed by Wrychester solicitors. To one of these Glassdale, on arriving in the old city, promptly proceeded—selecting the offerer of the larger reward. He presently found himself in the presence of an astute-looking man who, having had his visitor’s name sent in to him, regarded Glassdale with very obvious curiosity.
“Mr. Glassdale?” he said inquiringly, as the caller took an offered chair. “Are you, by any chance, the Mr. Glassdale whose name is mentioned in connection with last night’s remarkable affair?”
He pointed to a copy of the weekly newspaper, lying on his desk, and to a formal account of the discovery of the Saxonsteade jewels which had been furnished to the press, at the Duke’s request, by Mitchington. Glassdale glanced at it—unconcernedly.
“The same,” he answered. “But I didn’t call here on that matter—though what I did call about is certainly relative to it. You’ve offered a reward for any information that would lead to the solution of that mystery about Braden—and the other man, Collishaw.”
“Of a thousand pounds—yes!” replied the solicitor, looking at his visitor with still more curiosity, mingled with expectancy. “Can you give any?”
Glassdale pulled out the two handbills which he had obtained from Bryce.
“There are two rewards offered,” he remarked. “Are they entirely independent of each other?”
“We know nothing of the other,” answered the solicitor. “Except, of course, that it exists. They’re quite independent.”
“Who’s offering the five hundred pound one?” asked Glassdale.
The solicitor paused, looking his man over. He saw at once that Glassdale had, or believed he had, something to tell—and was disposed to be unusually cautious about telling it.
“Well,” he replied, after a pause. “I believe—in fact, it’s an open secret—that the offer of five hundred pounds is made by Dr. Ransford.”
“And—yours?” inquired Glassdale. “Who’s at the back of yours—a thousand?”
The solicitor smiled.
“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Glassdale,” he observed. “Can you give any information?”
Glassdale threw his questioner a significant glance.
“Whatever information I might give,” he said, “I’d only give to a principal—the principal. From what I’ve seen and known of all this, there’s more in it than is on the surface. I can tell something. I knew John Braden—who, of course, was John Brake—very well, for some years. Naturally, I was in his confidence.”
“About more than the Saxonsteade jewels, you mean?” asked the solicitor.
“About more than that,” assented Glassdale. “Private matters. I’ve no doubt I can throw some light—some!—on this Wrychester Paradise affair. But, as I said just now, I’ll only deal with the principal. I wouldn’t tell you, for instance—as your principal’s solicitor.”
The solicitor smiled again.
“Your ideas, Mr. Glassdale, appear to fit in with our principal’s,” he remarked. “His instructions—strict instructions—to us are that if anybody turns up who can
