“Falkiner Wraye,” he said, “had an unfortunate gun accident in his youth which marked him for life. He lost the middle finger of his left hand, and he got a bad scar on his left jaw. There they are, those marks! Fortunate for you, Mr. Folliot, that the police don't know all that I know, for if they did, those marks would have done for you days ago!” For a minute or two Folliot sat joggling his leg—a bad sign in him of rising temper if Bryce had but known it. While he remained silent he watched Bryce narrowly, and when he spoke, his voice was calm as ever.
“And what use do you intend to put your knowledge to, if one may ask?” he inquired, half sneeringly. “You said just now that you'd no doubt that man Glassdale could be bought, and I'm inclining to think that you're one of those men that have their price. What is it?”
“We've not come to that,” retorted Bryce. “You're a bit mistaken. If I have my price, it's not in the same commodity that Glassdale would want. But before we do any talking about that sort of thing, I want to add to my stock of knowledge. Look here! We'll be candid. I don't care a snap of my fingers that Brake, or Braden's dead, or that Collishaw's dead, nor if one had his neck broken and the other was poisoned, but—whose hand was that which the mason, Varner, saw that morning, when Brake was flung out of that doorway? Come, now!—whose?”
“Not mine, my lad!” answered Folliot, confidently. “That's a fact?”
Bryce hesitated, giving Folliot a searching look. And Folliot nodded solemnly. “I tell you, not mine!” he repeated. “I'd naught to do with it!”
“Then who had?” demanded Bryce. “Was it the other man—Flood? And if so, who is Flood?”
Folliot got up from his chair and, cigar between his lips and hands under the tails of his old coat, walked silently about the quiet room for awhile. He was evidently thinking deeply, and Bryce made no attempt to disturb him. Some minutes went by before Folliot took the cigar from his lips and leaning against the chimneypiece looked fixedly at his visitor.
“Look here, my lad!” he said, earnestly. “You're no doubt, as you say, a good hand at finding things out, and you've doubtless done a good bit of ferreting, and done it well enough in your own opinion. But there's one thing you can't find out, and the police can't find out either, and that's the precise truth about Braden's death. I'd no hand in it—it couldn't be fastened on to me, anyhow.”
Bryce looked up and interjected one word.
“Collishaw?”