“You don’t mean to say that—­that you suspect he’s been poisoned?” he asked.  “Good Lord, if that is so—­”

“I don’t think you’ll find that there’s much doubt about it,” answered Bryce.  “But that’s a point that will soon be settled.  You’d better tell the Coroner at once, Mitchington, and he’ll issue a formal order to Dr. Coates to make a post-mortem.  And,” he added significantly, “I shall be surprised if it isn’t as I say—­poison!”

“If that’s so,” observed Mitchington, with a grim shake of his head, “if that really is so, then I know what I shall think!  This!” he went on, pointing to the dead man, “this is—­a sort of sequel to the other affair.  There’s been something in what the poor chap said—­he did know something against somebody, and that somebody’s got to hear of it—­and silenced him.  But, Lord, doctor, how can it have been done?”

“I can see how it can have been done, easy enough,” said Bryce.  “This man has evidently been at work here, by himself, all the morning.  He of course brought his dinner with him.  He no doubt put his basket and his bottle down somewhere, while he did his work.  What easier than for some one to approach through these trees and shrubs while the man’s back was turned, or he was busy round one of these corners, and put some deadly poison into that bottle?  Nothing!”

“Well,” remarked Mitchington, “if that’s so, it proves something else—­to my mind.”

“What!” asked Bryce.

“Why, that whoever it was who did it was somebody who had a knowledge of poison!” answered Mitchington.  “And I should say there aren’t many people in Wrychester who have such knowledge outside yourselves and the chemists.  It’s a black business, this!”

Bryce nodded silently.  He waited until Dr. Coates, an elderly man who was the leading practitioner in the town, arrived, and to him he gave a careful account of his discovery.  And after the police had taken the body away, and he had accompanied Mitchington to the police-station and seen the tin bottle and the remains of Collishaw’s dinner safely locked up, he went home to lunch, and to wonder at this strange development.  The inspector was doubtless right in saying that Collishaw had been done to death by somebody who wanted to silence him—­but who could that somebody be?  Bryce’s thoughts immediately turned to the fact that Ransford had overheard all that Mitchington had said, in that very room in which he, Bryce, was then lunching—­Ransford!  Was it possible that Ransford had realized a danger in Collishaw’s knowledge, and had—­

He was interrupted at this stage by Mitchington, who came hurriedly in with a scared face.

“I say, I say!” he whispered as soon as Bryce’s landlady had shut the door on them.  “Here’s a fine business!  I’ve heard something—­something I can hardly credit—­but it’s true.  I’ve been to tell Collishaw’s family what’s happened.  And—­I’m fairly dazed by it—­yet it’s there—­it is so!”