“Here’s one of the police, now,” said Bryce calmly.  “Probably come to extract information.  I would much rather he didn’t see you here—­but I’d also like you to hear what I shall say to him.  Step inside there,” he continued, drawing aside the curtains which shut off the back room.  “Don’t stick at trifles!—­you don’t know what may be afoot.”

He almost forced them away, drew the curtains again, and hurrying to the front door, returned almost immediately with Mitchington.

“Hope I’m not disturbing you, doctor,” said the inspector, as Bryce brought him in and again closed the door.  “Not?  All right, then—­I came round to ask you a question.  There’s a queer rumour getting out in the town, about that affair last week.  Seems to have sprung from some of those old dowagers in the Close.”

“Of course!” said Bryce.  He was mixing a whisky-and-soda for his caller, and his laugh mingled with the splash of the siphon.  “Of course!  I’ve heard it.”

“You’ve heard?” remarked Mitchington.  “Um!  Good health, sir!—­heard, of course, that—­”

“That Braden called on Dr. Ransford not long before the accident, or murder, or whatever it was, happened,” said Bryce.  “That’s it—­eh?”

“Something of that sort,” agreed Mitchington.  “It’s being said, anyway, that Braden was at Ransford’s house, and presumably saw him, and that Ransford, accordingly, knows something about him which he hasn’t told.  Now—­what do you know?  Do you know if Ransford and Braden did meet that morning?”

“Not at Ransford’s house, anyway,” answered Bryce promptly.  “I can prove that.  But since this rumour has got out, I’ll tell you what I do know, and what the truth is.  Braden did come to Ransford’s—­not to the house, but to the surgery.  He didn’t see Ransford—­Ransford had gone out, across the Close.  Braden saw—­me!”

“Bless me!—­I didn’t know that,” remarked Mitchington.  “You never mentioned it.”

“You’ll not wonder that I didn’t,” said Bryce, laughing lightly, “when I tell you what the man wanted.”

“What did he want, then?” asked Mitchington.

“Merely to be told where the Cathedral Library was,” answered Bryce.

Ransford, watching Mary Bewery, saw her cheeks flush, and knew that Bryce was cheerfully telling lies.  But Mitchington evidently had no suspicion.

“That all?” he asked.  “Just a question?”

“Just a question—­that question,” replied Bryce.  “I pointed out the Library—­and he walked away.  I never saw him again until I was fetched to him—­dead.  And I thought so little of the matter that—­well, it never even occurred to me to mention it.”

“Then—­though he did call—­he never saw Ransford?” asked the inspector.

“I tell you Ransford was already gone out,” answered Bryce.  “He saw no one but myself.  Where Mrs. Deramore made her mistake—­I happen to know, Mitchington, that she started this rumour—­was in trying to make two and two into five.  She saw this man crossing the Close, as if from Ransford’s house and she at once imagined he’d seen and been talking with Ransford.”