“My stepfather says—­and I tell you he saw the man,” said Sackville, who was noted in Wrychester circles as a loquacious and forward youth; “he says that whatever happened must have happened as soon as ever the old chap got up into that clerestory gallery.  Look here!—­it’s like this.  My stepfather had gone in there for the morning service—­strict old church-goer he is, you know—­and he saw this stranger going up the stairway.  He’s positive, Mr. Folliot, that it was then five minutes to ten.  Now, then, I ask you—­isn’t he right, my stepfather, when he says that it must have happened at once—­immediately?

“Because that man, Varner, the mason, says he saw the man fall before ten.  What?”

One of the group nodded at Bryce.

“I should think Bryce knows what time it happened as well as anybody,” he said.  “You were first on the spot, Bryce, weren’t you?”

“After Varner,” answered Bryce laconically.  “As to the time —­I could fix it in this way—­the organist was just beginning a voluntary or something of the sort.”

“That means ten o’clock—­to the minute—­when he was found!” exclaimed Sackville triumphantly.  “Of course, he’d fallen a minute or two before that—­which proves Mr. Folliot to be right.  Now what does that prove?  Why, that the old chap’s assailant, whoever he was, dogged him along that gallery as soon as he entered, seized him when he got to the open doorway, and flung him through!  Clear as—­as noonday!”

One of the group, a rather older man than the rest, who was leaning back in a tilted chair, hands in pockets, watching Sackville Bonham smilingly, shook his head and laughed a little.

“You’re taking something for granted, Sackie, my son!” he said.  “You’re adopting the mason’s tale as true.  But I don’t believe the poor man was thrown through that doorway at all —­not I!”

Bryce turned sharply on this speaker—­young Archdale, a member of a well-known firm of architects.

“You don’t?” he exclaimed.  “But Varner says he saw him thrown!”

“Very likely,” answered Archdale.  “But it would all happen so quickly that Varner might easily be mistaken.  I’m speaking of something I know.  I know every inch of the Cathedral fabric—­ought to, as we’re always going over it, professionally.  Just at that doorway, at the head of St. Wrytha’s Stair, the flooring of the clerestory gallery is worn so smooth that it’s like a piece of glass—­and it slopes!  Slopes at a very steep angle, too, to the doorway itself.  A stranger walking along there might easily slip, and if the door was open, as it was, he’d be shot out and into space before he knew what was happening.”

This theory produced a moment’s silence—­broken at last by Sackville Bonham.

“Varner says he saw—­saw!—­a man’s hand, a gentleman’s hand,” insisted Sackville.  “He saw a white shirt cuff, a bit of the sleeve of a coat.  You’re not going to get over that, you know.  He’s certain of it!”