Page:The Paradise Mystery - Fletcher (1920).djvu/42

suddenly as it had occurred. Then came stillness.

"That's the end!" he muttered. "The man's dead! I'll guarantee that before I put a hand on him. Dead enough!" he went on, as he reached the body and dropped on one knee by it. "His neck's broken."

The mason bent down and looked, half-curiously, half-fearfully, at the dead man. Then he glanced upward—at the open door high above them in the walls.

"It's a fearful drop, that, sir," he said. "And he came down with such violence. You're sure it's over with him?"

"He died just as we came up," answered Bryce. "That movement we saw was the last effort—involuntary, of course. Look here, Varner!—you'll have to get help. You'd better fetch some of the cathedral people—some of the vergers. No!" he broke off suddenly, as the low strains of an organ came from within the great building. "They're just beginning the morning service—of course, it's ten o'clock. Never mind them—go straight to the police. Bring them back—I'll stay here."

The mason turned off towards the gateway of the Close, and while the strains of the organ grew louder, Bryce bent over the dead man, wondering what had really happened. Thrown from an open doorway in the clerestory over St. Wrytha's Stair?—it seemed almost impossible! But a sudden thought struck him—supposing two men, wishing to talk in privacy unobserved, had gone up into the clerestory of the Cathedral—as they easily could, by more than one door, by more than one stair—and supposing they had quarrelled, and one of them had flung or pushed