“I know that what one man does, another’s likely to do.”
“I’m not saying that Nealman killed himself, but listen how much there is to say for such a theory. You’re right—what one man does, another’s likely to do. A curious thing about suicides, Weldon tells me, is that they usually come in droves. One man sets an example for another. Say you’re worrying to death about something, sick perhaps, or financially ruined, and you hear of some fellow—some chap you know, perhaps, a man you respect almost as much as you respect yourself—suddenly getting out of all his difficulties all nice and quiet—with one little click to the head? Isn’t it likely you’d begin thinking about the same thing for yourself? Call it mob psychology—I only know it happens in fact.
“I’m more confident than ever that Florey did himself in, on account of his sickness. Here was Nealman, worried to death over money matters, holding a lot of options on a falling market. It’s true that we didn’t find Florey’s knife, but who can say but maybe Nealman himself threw it into the lagoon, and dragged the body afterward, so that no one would guess it was suicide. He liked Florey—he didn’t want any one to know he had done himself in. Maybe he was thinking already about doing the same thing to himself, and in such a case he’d been glad enough to have some one hide the evidence of suicide. To-day he gets word of a final smash, and he stays all day in his room, brooding about it. To-night comes this heat—enough to drive a man crazy. Maybe he just called out to make us think it was murder. Proud men don’t usually want the world to know that they’ve killed themselves.
“Then there’s one other thing—more important still. What’s that book, open, on the table?”
I glanced at its leathern cover. “The Bible,” I told him.
“The Holy Book. And how often do you find a worldly man like this Nealman getting out the Bible and reading it? Doesn’t it show that he was planning something mighty serious—that he wanted to give his soul every chance before he took the last step? It’s a common thing for suicides to read the Bible the last thing. And what are these?”
He showed me a rumpled sheet of paper, procured from the waste-basket, on which had been written a number of unrelated figures.
“I can’t say,” I told him. “Probably he was doing some figuring about his losses.”
“Looks to me like he was out of his head—was just writin’ any old figures down. But maybe you’re right.”
It was true that the bed had not been slept in. Nealman had lain down on it, however, and disarranged the spread. Many cigarette and cigar stubs filled the smoking stand, and a half-filled whiskey-and-soda glass stood on the window sill.