J. S. Fletcher

The Paradise Mystery J. S. Fletcher

"What is it, Varner?" asked Bryce calmly. "Something happened?"

The man swept his hand across his forehead as if he were dazed, and then jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

"A man!" he gasped. "Foot of St. Wrytha's Stair there, doctor. Dead -- or if not dead, near it. I saw it!"

Bryce seized Varner's arm and gave it a shake.

"You saw -- what?" he demanded.

"Saw him -- fall. Or rather -- flung!" panted Varner. "Somebody -- couldn't see who, nohow -- flung him right through yon doorway, up there. He fell right over the steps -- crash!" Bryce looked over the tops of the yews and cypresses at the doorway in the clerestory to which Varner pointed -- a low, open archway gained by the half-ruinous stair. It was forty feet at least from the ground.

"You saw him -- thrown!" he exclaimed. "Thrown -- down there? Impossible, man!"

"Tell you I saw it!" asserted Varner doggedly. "I was looking at one of those old tombs yonder -- somebody wants some repairs doing -- and the jackdaws were making such a to-do up there by the roof I glanced up at them. And I saw this man thrown through that door -- fairly flung through it! God! -- do you think I could mistake my own eyes?"

"Did you see who flung him?" asked Bryce.

"No; I saw a hand -- just for one second, as it might be -- by the edge of the doorway."