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asked: "Do you think it really was murder?"

"I don't know what it was," answered Bryce. "And I wasn't first on the spot. That was Varner, the mason—he called me." He turned from the lad to glance at the girl, who was peeping curiously over the gate into the yews and cypresses. "Do you think your father's at the Library just now?" he asked. "Shall I find him there?"

"I should think he is," answered Betty Campany. "He generally goes down about this time." She turned and pulled Dick Bewery's sleeve. "Let's go up in the clerestory," she said. "We can see that, anyway."

"Also closed, miss," said the policeman, shaking his head. "No admittance there, neither. The public firmly warned off—so to speak. 'I won't have the Cathedral turned into a peep-show!' that's precisely what I heard the Dean say with my own ears. So—closed!"

The boy and the girl turned away and went off across the Close, and the policeman looked after them and laughed.

"Lively young couple, that, sir!" he said. "What they call healthy curiosity, I suppose? Plenty o' that knocking around in the city today."

Bryce, who had half-turned in the direction of the Library, at the other side of the Close, turned round again.

"Do you know if your people are doing anything about identifying the dead man?" he asked. "Did you hear anything at noon?"

"Nothing but that there'll be inquiries through the newspapers, sir," replied the policeman. "That's the