“Aye, doctor,” he said.  “And—­what do you know about Glassdale, now?”

Bryce, who would have cheerfully hobnobbed with a man whom he was about to conduct to the scaffold, lifted his glass and drank.

“A good deal,” he answered as he set the glass down.  “The fact is—­I came here to tell you so!—­I know a good deal about everything.”

“A wide term!” remarked Folliot.  “You’ve got some limitation to it, I should think.  What do you mean by—­everything?”

“I mean about recent matters,” replied Bryce.  “I’ve interested myself in them—­for reasons of my own.  Ever since Braden was found at the foot of those stairs in Paradise, and I was fetched to him, I’ve interested myself.  And—­I’ve discovered a great deal—­more, much more than’s known to anybody.”

Folliot threw one leg over the other and began to jog his foot.

“Oh!” he said after a pause.  “Dear me!  And—­what might you know, now, doctor?  Aught you can tell me eh?”

“Lots!” answered Bryce.  “I came to tell you—­on seeing that Glassdale had been with you.  Because—­I was with Glassdale this morning.”

Folliot made no answer.  But Bryce saw that his cool, almost indifferent manner was changing—­he was beginning, under the surface, to get anxious.

“When I left Glassdale—­at noon,” continued Bryce, “I’d no idea—­and I don’t think he had—­that he was coming to see you.  But I know what put the notion into his head.  I gave him copies of those two reward bills.  He no doubt thought he might make a bit—­and so he came in to town, and—­to you.”

“Well?” asked Folliot.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” remarked Bryce, reflectively, and almost as if speaking to himself, “I shouldn’t at all wonder if Glassdale’s the sort of man who can be bought.  He, no doubt, has his price.  But all that Glassdale knows is nothing—­to what I know.”

Folliot had allowed his cigar to go out.  He threw it away, took a fresh one from the box, and slowly struck a match and lighted it.

“What might you know, now?” he asked after another pause.

“I’ve a bit of a faculty for finding things out,” answered Bryce boldly.  “And I’ve developed it.  I wanted to know all about Braden—­and about who killed him—­and why.  There’s only one way of doing all that sort of thing, you know.  You’ve got to go back—­a long way back—­to the very beginnings.  I went back—­to the time when Braden was married.  Not as Braden, of course—­but as who he really was—­John Brake.  That was at a place called Braden Medworth, near Barthorpe, in Leicestershire.”

He paused there, watching Folliot.  But Folliot showed no more than close attention, and Bryce went on.