They were lying on his desk, one of them torn in two as if in a fit of anger, the other rumpled from a hundred readings. I read aloud to the sheriff:
BLAIR COMBINE FORCING I. S. AND H. TO BOTTOM. MOVE QUICK IF YOU CAN.
I. S. AND H. DOWN TO 28. ALL YOUR INDUSTRIALS SMASHED WIDE OPEN. FLETCHER NEALMAN GOES DOWN IN SMASH.
The sheriff halted in his search and took the messages from my hand. "I'm not much up on the stock market," he said. "Do you know what these mean----"
"Not exactly. I know that I. S. and H. stock has taken a fearful drop--if he had bought heavily on margin his whole fortune might have been wiped out. Blair is a prominent speculator on the exchange. Industrials refer, of course, to industrial stocks. Fletcher Nealman was Mr. Nealman's uncle, supposed to be a man of great wealth----"
"Then you think--Nealman was ruined financially?" He paused, seemingly studying his hands. "I wonder if it could be true."
"You mean of course--the same thing that you guessed about Florey. Suicide?"
"Yes. I'll admit there's plenty against it."
"Many a man cries for help after he's started to do himself in. The darkness scares 'em, when it's too late to turn back. That wouldn't puzzle me at all. Killdare, do you know the importance of example?"
"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.