“Nice little place to be alone in, d’ye see?” said Folliot. “Cool in summer—warm in winter—modern fire-grate, you notice. Come here when I want to do a bit of quiet thinking, what?”
“Good place for that—certainly,” agreed Bryce.
Folliot pointed his visitor to one of the big chairs and turning to a cabinet brought out some glasses, a syphon of soda-water, and a heavy cut-glass decanter. He nodded at a box of cigars which lay open on a table at Bryce’s elbow as he began to mix a couple of drinks.
“Help yourself,” he said. “Good stuff, those.”
Not until he had given Bryce a drink, and had carried his own glass to another easy chair did Folliot refer to any reason for Bryce’s visit. But once settled down, he looked at him speculatively.
“What did you want to see me about?” he asked.
Bryce, who had lighted a cigar, looked across its smoke at the imperturbable face opposite.
“You’ve just had Glassdale here,” he observed quietly. “I saw him leave you.”
Folliot nodded—without any change of expression.
“Aye, doctor,” he said. “And—what do you know about Glassdale, now?”
Bryce, who would have cheerfully hobnobbed with a man whom he was about to conduct to the scaffold, lifted his glass and drank.
“A good deal,” he answered as he set the glass down. “The fact is—I came here to tell you so!—I know a good deal about everything.”
“A wide term!” remarked Folliot. “You’ve got some limitation to it, I should think. What do you mean by—everything?”
“I mean about recent matters,” replied Bryce. “I’ve interested myself in them—for reasons of my own. Ever since Braden was found at the foot of those stairs in Paradise, and I was fetched to him, I’ve interested myself. And—I’ve discovered a great deal—more, much more than’s known to anybody.”
Folliot threw one leg over the other and began to jog his foot.
“Oh!” he said after a pause. “Dear me! And—what might you know, now, doctor? Aught you can tell me eh?”
“Lots!” answered Bryce. “I came to tell you—on seeing that Glassdale had been with you. Because—I was with Glassdale this morning.”
Folliot made no answer. But Bryce saw that his cool, almost indifferent manner was changing—he was beginning, under the surface, to get anxious.
“When I left Glassdale—at noon,” continued Bryce, “I’d no idea—and I don’t think he had—that he was coming to see you. But I know what put the notion into his head. I gave him copies of those two reward bills. He no doubt thought he might make a bit—and so he came in to town, and—to you.”
“Well?” asked Folliot.
“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.
“What might you know, now?” he asked after another pause.
“I’ve a bit of a faculty for finding things out,” answered Bryce boldly. “And I’ve developed it. I wanted to know all about Braden—and about who killed him—and why. There’s only one way of doing all that sort of thing, you know. You’ve got to go back—a long way back—to the very beginnings. I went back—to the time when Braden was married. Not as Braden, of course—but as who he really was—John Brake. That was at a place called Braden Medworth, near Barthorpe, in Leicestershire.”
He paused there, watching Folliot. But Folliot showed no more than close attention, and Bryce went on.
“Not much in that—for the really important part of the story,” he continued. “But Brake had other associations with Barthorpe—a bit later. He got to know—got into close touch with a Barthorpe man who, about the time of Brake’s marriage, left Barthorpe and settled in London. Brake and this man began to have some secret dealings together. There was another man in with them, too—a man who was a sort of partner of the Barthorpe man’s. Brake had evidently a belief in these men, and he trusted them—unfortunately for himself he sometimes trusted the bank’s money to them. I know what happened—he used to let them have money for short financial transactions—to be refunded within a very brief space. But—he went to the fire too often, and got his fingers burned in the end. The two men did him—one of them in particular—and cleared out. He had to stand the racket. He stood it—to the tune of ten years’ penal servitude. And, naturally, when he’d finished his time, he wanted to find those two men—and began a long search for them. Like to know the names of the men, Mr. Folliot?”
“You might mention ’em—if you know ’em,” answered Folliot.
“The name of the particular one was Wraye—Falkiner Wraye,” replied Bryce promptly. “Of the other—the man of lesser importance—Flood.”
The two men looked quietly at each other for a full moment’s silence. And it was Bryce who first spoke with a ring of confidence in his tone which showed that he knew he had the whip hand.
“Shall I tell you something about Falkiner Wraye?” he asked. “I will!—it’s deeply interesting. Mr. Falkiner Wraye, after cheating and deceiving Brake, and leaving him to pay the penalty of his over-trustfulness, cleared out of England and carried his moneymaking talents to foreign parts. He succeeded in doing well—he would!—and eventually he came back and married a rich widow and settled himself down in an out-of-the-world English town to grow roses. You’re Falkiner Wraye, you know, Mr. Folliot!”
Bryce laughed as he
