The burly officer waited for no further orders, but, grasping the knob, threw his whole weight against the door, and it gave way. A cry of surprise escaped him, and as the rest crowded up they saw a hideous sight. Frye was sitting in his chair with head thrown back staring at the ceiling, and with mouth and eyes wide open! The room was stifling with gas, and the officer opened the window. In doing so he noticed the two stop-cocks were opened and he turned them off. Then he returned to the hall. When the room was fit to breathe in again, all four entered, and the officer laid his hand upon Frye's face. "Dead," he exclaimed, "and has been for hours!" Then as the others crowded up to gaze at the face, which bore a look of inexpressible agony, Albert noticed an envelope on Frye's desk directed to Silas Terry. He quietly put it in his pocket and joined with the rest in a search of the room. "It looks like a case of suicide," observed the officer, "door locked, keyhole and cracks plugged, window shut, and two gas-burners open! Safe unlocked and wide open, and here's a till with money in it!" Then taking up a bundle of papers that lay in this till and examining them he gave a long whistle and exclaimed, "Here's a contract for fifty thousand bushels of wheat bought in Chicago at ninety-eight cents, and wheat closed yesterday at seventy-one! And here are two more lots, one for one hundred thousand bushels!" Then handing the certificates to Albert he added, "Old Nick has been bulling wheat, and if he has been holding on to these purchases for the last three weeks, I don't wonder he has taken gas!" And then, as a crowd had gathered, and were gazing at the ghastly staring face of Frye, made ten times more hideous in death than in life, he added, "In the name of the law I must close the door and notify a coroner." When Albert, with Uncle Terry and Frank, reached his office he drew the letter he had taken from Frye's desk out of his pocket and handed it to Uncle Terry. "It was directed to you," he said, "and I thought best to bring it away." When the old man opened it he exclaimed, "By the great eternal jumpin' Jehosaphat, if here ain't the hull o' the things we want so bad, and a letter to some furriners! Here, you read it, Mr. Page; the writin's wussen crow tracks in the mud." The letter was as follows: MESSRS. THYGESON & COMPANY, _Stockholm_: