Page:The Paradise Mystery - Fletcher (1920).djvu/59

moment later, that instead of being an inscription, it was a direction. And a very plain direction, too!—he read it easily. In Paradise, at Wrychester, next to, or near, the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or, possibly, Jenkinson, from, or behind, the head, twenty-three, fifteen—inches, most likely. There was no doubt that there was the meaning of the words. What, now, was it that lay behind the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or Jenkinson, in Wrychester Paradise?—in all probability twenty-three inches from the head-stone, and fifteen inches beneath the surface. That was a question which Bryce immediately resolved to find a satisfactory answer to; in the meantime there were other questions which he set down in order on his mental tablets. They were these:—

1. Who, really, was the man who had registered at the Mitre under the name of John Braden?

2. Why did he wish to make a personal call on the Duke of Saxonsteade?

3. Was he some man who had known Ransford in time past—and whom Ransford had no desire to meet again?

4. Did Ransford meet him—in the Cathedral?

5. Was it Ransford who flung him to his death down St. Wrytha's Stair?

6. Was that the real reason of the agitation in which he, Bryce, had found Ransford a few moments after the discovery of the body?

There was plenty of time before him for the due solution of these mysteries, reflected Bryce—and for solving another problem which might possibly have some relationship to them—that of the exact connection between Ransford and his two wards. Bryce,