had disappeared. Six weeks of German
cooking, a German barber, and the spectacles had produced a graduate of
Heidelberg.

At a furnished room on a side street Jimmie left his baggage, and at
once at the public library, in the back numbers of the daily papers,
read the accounts of his death and interviews with his friends. They all
agreed the reason for his suicide was his fear of approaching blindness.
As he read, Jimmie became deeply depressed. Any sneaking hopes he might
have held that he was not dead were now destroyed. The evidence of his
friends was enough to convince any one. It convinced him. Now that it
was too late, his act of self-sacrifice appeared supremely stupid and
ridiculous. Bitterly he attacked himself as a bungler and an ass. He
assured himself he should have made a fight for it; should have fought
for his wife: and against Maddox. Instead of which he weakly had effaced
himself, had surrendered his rights, had abandoned his wife at a time
when most was required of him. He tortured himself by thinking that
probably at that very moment she was in need of his help. And at that
very moment head-lines in the paper he was searching proved this was
true.

"BLAGWIN'S LOST WILL," he read. "DETECTIVES RELINQUISH SEARCH! REWARD
OF TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS FAILS TO BRING CLEW!"

Jimmie raced through the back numbers. They told him his will, in which
he had left everything to Jeanne, could not be found; that in
consequence, except her widow's third, all of his real estate, which was
the bulk of his property, would now go to two distant cousins who
already possessed more than was good for them, and who in Paris were
leading lives of elegant wastefulness. The will had been signed the week
before his wedding-day, but the lawyer who had drawn it was dead, and
the witnesses, two servants, had long since quit Jimmie's service and
could not be found. It was known Jimmie kept the will in the safe at his
country house, but from the safe it had disappeared.

Jimmie's best friend, and now Jeanne's lawyer, the man who had refused
him the divorce, had searched the house from the attic to the coal
cellar; detectives had failed to detect; rewards had remained unclaimed;
no one could tell where the will was hidden. Only Jimmie could tell. And
Jimmie was dead. And no one knew that better than Jimmie. Again he
upbraided himself. Why had he not foreseen this catastrophe? Why,
before his final taking off, had he not returned the wil