y had no rights--he insisted on that--and any attempt to
influence the Crown about the line of succession might endanger the claim.

And now Robert Turold was dead in the midst of his plans--dead when he had
almost gained the peak of his dreams.

It seemed incredible, almost impossible. Death at such a moment assumed an
unexpected reality as an actual and tangible mocker of human ambitions.
And this letter with its postscript--what was the meaning of it? The
lawyer knew nothing of Robert Turold's announcement to his family on the
previous day. If he had, it would have intensified his feeling that the
letter hinted at some terrible secret hidden behind the thick curtain of
his client's strange and sudden death. The hasty postscript suggested a
quickened sense of a growing danger which Robert Turold had seen too late
to avert.

What danger? Mr. Brimsdown could form no idea. He reflected that he really
knew very little of Robert Turold's private life in spite of the long
association between them. He must have had other interests at one time or
other beside the eternal question of the title. Mr. Brimsdown had vaguely
understood that the money he had invested for Robert Turold had been
gained abroad--in the wilds of the earth--in his client's early life, but
his client had never confided to him the manner of the gathering. That was
a page in the dead man's life of which his trusted legal adviser knew
nothing whatever. It was unsafe to assume that the page, if revealed,
would throw any light on his tragic death, but there was a possibility
that it might.

The evening newspaper he had brought home lay on the carpet at his feet
exposing the headline--"A Cornish Mystery"--which had caught his eye at
the restaurant. Mr. Brimsdown picked up the sheet and read the report
again. There was nothing in it to help him. It was only a brief
notification of the facts--of a death which, in the words of the
newspaper's local correspondent, "pointed to suicide."

Suicide! The letter on which the ink was still bluish and fresh, seemed to
convey Robert Turold's denial of the suggestion that he had taken his
life. It was the cry of a man who had looked into the dark place of fear
and seen Death lurking within. Only mortal terror could have called forth
that passionate frantic appeal. And that appeal accomplished its purpose,
although it came too late. Robert Turold was dead, but the call for
elucidation rang loudly from his coffin. The dead