After Pasquale had gone I sat for a while reflecting on what he had told me about the result of his preliminary investigations into the cause of the epidemic of suicide which was paralyzing the entire city.
One peculiar feature of these horrors he had especially dwelt upon—namely, the fact that in each case the suicide had left a letter stating that he had determined to take his own life. As to the authenticity of these letters the authorities appeared to have no doubt whatever. On comparison with other specimens of the dead men’s handwriting they could not, it was declared, be called in question.
Then, too, there was the extraordinary similarity as to method. Each man had, with great deliberation, severed his jugular vein, using for the purpose his own razor, which, in every instance, had been found firmly clasped in the right hand of the suicide.
“The Press call it a contagion of suicide,” Pasquale had said, with a smile of contempt which had roused my easily stirred ire, “now I say it is nothing of the kind. It is murder and not suicide, and I will prove it so.”
Yes, that had been the absurdly egotistical remark which had finally exhausted my forbearance. I had no patience with such hair-brained ideas.
During the next week I saw nothing of my volatile friend, and when he finally made his appearance he looked pale and, I imagined, thinner.
“I have been called away,” he explained to me during this visit, “and I must now redouble my efforts to work out my theory as to those so-called suicides.”
On the next occasion when he visited my rooms he told me with great exultation that he had at length received from a prominent expert in handwriting the assurance, after a searching examination, that the letters purporting to have been written by the poor suicides had all been penned by the same hand; and that on careful comparison, although wonderful forgeries, they were all essentially different in character from the handwritings of the dead men.
“Such is the opinion of the expert I employed,” continued Pasquale, “but looking to the gravity of the subject and the responsibility of making so serious a statement, before handing his written report to me he has taken the precaution to obtain the opinion of two other experts on the subject. These opinions,” continued my friend with something of the exultation which had previously repelled me, “entirely endorse the views of the expert which I employed.”
When Pasquale produced the letter received from his expert, I found that his statement had in nowise been exaggerated. The original view and the opinions endorsing it, written in cold and well-weighed language, rested in my hand for a moment; then I dropped the dread papers on the table as I would have thrown from my grasp a cluster of poisonous reptiles.