eyes in his smiling affable
presence, and talk freely--sometimes too freely, as they later on
discovered to their cost. A chance word, a significant phrase, was
sufficient to set him burrowing underground with the activity of a mole,
to burst into the open later on with all his clues complete, to the
confusion of the trusting person with an unguarded tongue.

He had put these tactics into execution with Austin Turold. Austin, taking
tea when he called, in a bright blue room hung with pictures, had received
his visitor with a charming cordiality, insisted on his taking tea with
him, and then let loose a flood of small-talk, as though he were delighted
with his visitor. His welcome was so perfect, his manners so gracefully
unforced, that Barrant had an uneasy suspicion that he was being beaten at
his own game, and was slightly out of countenance in consequence. Up to
that moment he could not, for the life of him, decide whether Austin
Turold's polished self-assurance was a mask or not. It seemed too natural
to be assumed.

"Your own opinion is that your brother committed suicide?" he asked again.

"No other conclusion is possible, in my mind."

"But did he have any reason, that you know of, to commit suicide?"

Austin shrugged his shoulders. "Suicide is not usually associated with
reason," he observed. "But in Robert's case there is a reason, or so it
seems to me. I have not seen him for many years, but during my recent
close association with him I was struck by two things: the solitary
aloofness of his mind, and his overwhelming pride--pride in the family
name. These two traits in his character coloured all his actions. In the
first place, he disliked opening his mind to anybody, but the stronger
influence, his family pride, overcame his habitual secretiveness when he
thought it necessary and desirable to do so in furtherance of his darling
ambition--the restoration of this title. Men who lead a solitary,
self-contained life, like my brother, become introspective and
ultra-sensitive, and face any intimate personal revelation with the utmost
reluctance. They will nerve themselves to it when the occasion absolutely
requires, but the after effects--the mental self-probings, the agonized
self torture that a self-conscious proud man can inflict on himself when
he comes to analyze the effects of his disclosure on other minds, are
sometimes unendurable."

Austin put forward this analysis of his brother's state of mind with