Page:The Paradise Mystery - Fletcher (1920).djvu/97

from 1570 to ten years ago, and there is a very full index. Are you staying in the neighbourhood—or the village?"

"In the neighbourhood, yes; in the village, no longer than the time I shall spend in getting some lunch at the inn yonder," answered Bryce, nodding through an open window at an ancient tavern which stood in the valley beneath, close to an old stone bridge. "Perhaps you will kindly lend me this book for an hour?—then, if I see anything very noteworthy in the index, I can look at the actual registers when I bring it back."

The vicar replied that that was precisely what he had been about to suggest, and Bryce carried the book away. And while he sat in the inn parlour awaiting his lunch, he turned to the carefully-compiled index, glancing it through rapidly. On the third page he saw the name Bewery.

If the man who had followed Bryce from Barthorpe to Braden Medworth had been with him in the quiet inn parlour he would have seen his quarry start, and heard him let a stifled exclamation escape his lips. But the follower, knowing his man was safe for an hour, was in the bar outside eating bread and cheese and drinking ale, and Bryce's surprise was witnessed by no one. Yet he had been so much surprised that if all WryChester had been there he could not, despite his self-training in watchfulness, have kept back either start or exclamation.

Bewery! A name so uncommon that here—here, in this out-of-the-way Midland village!—there must be some connection with the object of his search. There the name stood out before him, to the exclusion