We read the note.
Honora [it began]—Don't think I am a coward to do this, but things cannot go on as they have been going. It is no use. I cannot work it out. This is the only way. So I shall drop out. You will find my will in the safe. Good-by forever.
Vail.
The peculiarly pungent smell of burning rubber had by this time completely filled the laboratory. It was stifling, sickening.
"There—you made me forget that test, with your confounded suicide," reproached Kennedy. "That sample's ruined."
"Glad of it," I snorted. "Now I won't need a gas-mask."
However, in curiosity I looked at the note again. It was, strangely enough, written on a typewriter.
"Hm!" exclaimed Kennedy, with mild interest. "Suicides don't usually write on typewriters. A hasty scrawl—that's what you usually find."
"But Wilford was an unusual man," I suggested. "You might look for almost anything from Wilford."
I read the note again. And as I did so I asked myself whether it was a suicide note, after all. To me, now, it seemed too calmly composed and written for that, as Kennedy had suggested.