to approach--all these things
were engraved on Mr. Brimsdown's mind, never to be forgotten. Who was it
that had staged such a crime in such a proscenium, in that vast
amphitheatre of black rocks which stretched dizzily down beneath those
gleaming windows?

Then came other impressions: the dead man upstairs, the disordered dusty
study, the stopped clock, the litter of papers. It was in the room where
Robert Turold had been murdered that Mr. Brimsdown questioned Thalassa
about the letter, and heard with a feeling of dismay his declaration that
he had not posted it. Where was the nearest pillar box? Nearly a mile
away, at the cross-roads. Could his late master have gone there to post it
that night? If he had, Thalassa hadn't heard him go out. Could anybody
else have posted it? No; there was nobody else to post it.

It was like questioning a head on an old Roman coin, so expressionless was
Thalassa's face as he delivered himself of these replies. But the lawyer
had the feeling that Thalassa was deriving a certain grim satisfaction
from his questioner's perplexity, and he dismissed him somewhat angrily.
Then, when he had gone, he turned to an examination of some of the papers
and documents which littered the room, but that was a search which told
him nothing.

When the shades of evening warned him to relinquish that task, he told
himself that he really ought to go and see Austin Turold before returning
to Penzance. But he shrank, with unaccountable reluctance, from the
performance of that obvious duty. He felt very old and tired, and his
temples were throbbing with a bad nervous headache. He therefore decided
to postpone his visit to Austin Turold until later.

CHAPTER XX

When the interview with Austin Turold did take place, Mr. Brimsdown learnt
with a feeling which was little less than astonishment that Robert Turold
had died without confiding to his brother the proofs, on which so much
depended, of the statement he had made on the day of his death.

"I cannot understand it," he murmured, putting down his tea-cup as he
spoke.

Austin had received him in the blue sitting-room, hung with the specimens
of Mr. Brierly's ineffectual art, and had given him tea, as he had given
Barrant tea some days before. But there was a subtle difference in the
manner of Mr. Brimsdown's reception; the tone was pitched higher, with
fine shades and inflections attuned for a more gentlemanly ear.

"It disposes of the suicide the