y of
Burke's "Vicissitudes of Families" was lying open on the table, and beside
it were two sheets of foolscap, covered with notes in thin irregular
handwriting. The first of these depicted the arms of the Turrald family,
as originally selected at the first institution of heraldry, and the
quarterings of the heiresses who had married into the family at a later
date.

The second sheet was headed "Devonian and Cornwall branch of the Turolds,"
and contained notes of Robert Turold's ancestral discoveries in that spot.
The notes were not finished, but ended abruptly in the middle of a
sentence: "It is necessary to make it clea--"

Those were the last words the dead man had written. He had dropped the
pen, which lay beside the paper, without finishing the word "clear."

The sight of this unfinished sheet kindled Barrant's imagination, and he
stood thoughtful, considering the meaning of it. Was it the attitude of a
man who had committed suicide? Was it conceivable that Robert Turold would
break off in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a word, and shoot
himself? It seemed a strange thing to do, but Barrant's experience told
him that there were no safe deductions where suicides were concerned. They
acted with the utmost precipitation or the utmost deliberation. Some wound
up their worldly affairs with businesslike precision before embarking on
their timeless voyage, others jumped into the black gulf without,
apparently, any premeditated intention, as if at the beckoning summons of
some grisly invisible hand which they dared not disobey. Barrant recalled
the strange case of a wealthy merchant who had cut his throat on a Bank
holiday and confessed before death that he had felt the same impulse on
that day for years past. He had whispered that the day marked to him such
a pause in life's dull round that it seemed to him a pity to start again.
He had resisted the impulse for years, but it had waxed stronger with each
recurring anniversary, and had overcome him at last.

Every suicide was a law unto himself. Barrant willingly conceded that, but
he could not so easily concede that a man like Robert Turold would put an
end to his life just when he was about to attain the summit of that life's
ambition. It was a Schopenhauerian doctrine that all men had suicidal
tendencies in them, in the sense that every man wished at times for the
cessation of the purposeless energy called life, and it was only the
violence of the actual a