at about eleven, when the printing of the paper was in full swing.  ’It was supposed by the persons whom he then saw that Mr. Frothingham finally quitted the office; whether he actually left the building or not seems to remain uncertain.  If so, he re-entered without being observed, which does not seem likely.  Between two and three o’clock this morning, when Stock and Share was practically ready for distribution, a man employed on the premises is said, for some unexplained reason, to have ascended to the top floor of the building, and to have entered a room ordinarily unused.  A gas-jet was burning, and the man was horrified to discover the dead body of Mr Frothingham, at full length on the floor, in his hand a pistol.  On the alarm being given, medical aid was at once summoned, and it became evident that death had taken place more than an hour previously.  That no one heard the report of a pistol can be easily explained by the noise of the machinery below.  The dead man’s face was placid.  Very little blood had issued from the wound, and the shot must have been fired with a remarkably steady hand.’

‘A room on the top floor of the building, ordinarily unused ——­’ What story was it that Alma Frothingham told last night, of her visit to the office of Stock and Share?  Rolfe had not paid much attention to it at the time; now he recalled the anecdote, and was more impressed by its significance.  That room, his first place of business, the scene of poor beginnings, Bennet Frothingham had chosen for his place of death.  Perhaps he had long foreseen this possibility, had mused upon the dramatic fitness of such an end; for there was a strain of melancholy in the man, legible on his countenance, perceptible in his private conversation.  Just about the time when Alma laughingly told the story, her father must have been sitting in that upper room, thinking his last thoughts; or it might be that he lay already dead.

Later issues contained much fuller reports.  The man who found the body had explained his behaviour in going up to the unused room, and it relieved the dark affair with a touch of comedy.  Before coming to work, he had quarrelled with his wife, and, rather than go home in the early hours of the morning, he hit upon the idea of finding a sleeping-place here on the premises, to which he could slink unnoticed.  ’It’s little enough sleep I get in my own house,’ was his remark to the reporter who won his confidence.  Clubmen were hilarious over this incident, speculating as to the result of its publication on the indiscreet man’s domestic troubles.