ime, newspaper boys began to yell. The earliest placards
roared in immense typography. In the Metropolitan Club, sheets moist
from the press suddenly descended like a fall of snow. Rolfe stood by a
window and read quietly. This first report told him little that he had
not already learnt, but there were a few details of the suicide.
Frothingham, it appeared, always visited the office of _Stock and
Share_ on the day before publication. Yesterday, as usual, he had
looked in for half an hour at three o'clock; but unexpectedly he came
again at seven in the evening, and for a third time at about eleven,
when the printing of the paper was in full swing. 'It was supposed by
the persons whom he then saw that Mr. Frothingham finally quitted the
office; whether he actually left the building or not seems to remain
uncertain. If so, he re-entered without being observed, which does not
seem likely. Between two and three o'clock this morning, when _Stock
and Share_ was practically ready for distribution, a man employed on
the premises is said, for some unexplained reason, to have ascended to
the top floor of the building, and to have entered a room ordinarily
unused. A gas-jet was burning, and the man was horrified to discover
the dead body of Mr. Frothingham, at full length on the floor, in his
hand a pistol. On the alarm being given, medical aid was at once
summoned, and it became evident that death had taken place more than an
hour previously. That no one heard the report of a pistol can be easily
explained by the noise of the machinery below. The dead man's face was
placid. Very little blood had issued from the wound, and the shot must
have been fired with a remarkably steady hand.'

'A room on the top floor of the building, ordinarily unused----' What
story was it that Alma Frothingham told last night, of her visit to the
office of _Stock and Share_? Rolfe had not paid much attention to it at
the time; now he recalled the anecdote, and was more impressed by its
significance. That room, his first place of business, the scene of poor
beginnings, Bennet Frothingham had chosen for his place of death.
Perhaps he had long foreseen this possibility, had mused upon the
dramatic fitness of such an end; for there was a strain of melancholy
in the man, legible on his countenance, perceptible in his private
conversation. Just about the time when Alma laughingly told the story,
her father must have been sitting in that upper room, thinking his