a sponge with chloroform, constructed a cone out of a towel, placed the sponge in the cone, put the cone over the sleeping man’s face and ran out of the room and waited thirty minutes for the chloroform to complete the work.  Waiting in the next room he heard the door bell ring, and ring again, but he paid no attention to the summons.  In point of fact he was never quite sure himself whether the bell was not the creation of his own overwrought brain.  At the end of half an hour he returned to the bedroom, removed the cone from Rice’s face and saw that he was dead, then after burning the sponge and the towel in the kitchen range he opened the windows, straightened the rooms out, called the elevator man, asked him to send for Dr. Curry, and telephoned to Patrick that Rice was dead.

Jones had no sooner telephoned Patrick that Rice was dead than the lawyer hastened to Dr. Curry’s, and within forty minutes appeared with him in Rice’s apartments, assuming complete charge.  Summoning an undertaker and having the cremation letter at hand, he gave orders for speedy cremation.  But he now discovered the principal mistake in his calculations.  He had omitted to investigate the length of time required to heat the crematory.  This he now discovered to his horror to be twenty-four hours.  But the body must be destroyed.  The undertaker suggested that the body might be embalmed while the crematory was being heated, and Patrick at once seized upon the suggestion and gave orders to that effect, although the cremation letter sets forth specifically that one of the reasons why Rice desired cremation was his horror of being embalmed.  The body was embalmed at the apartments that night, Dr. Curry innocently supplying the certificate of death from “old age and weak heart,” and “as immediate cause, indigestion followed by collocratal diarrhoea with mental worry.”

Having arranged for the cremation at the earliest possible moment, Jones and Patrick rifled the trunk in which Rice kept his papers, and stuffed them in a satchel which Patrick bore away with him.

The funeral was to be held early Tuesday morning and the ashes conveyed by Jones to Milwaukee, to be interred near the body of Rice’s wife, while the relatives should not be notified until it should be too late for them to reach New York.

The next step was to secure the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars which Rice had on deposit.  Patrick had already forged Rice’s name to blank checks on Swenson and the Fifth Avenue Trust Company.  Early Monday morning Jones, with Patrick looking over his shoulder and directing him, filled out the body of the checks, which covered all but ten thousand dollars of Rice’s deposits.  These consisted of one for twenty-five thousand dollars and one for sixty-five thousand dollars on Swenson, one for twenty-five thousand dollars and another for one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars on the Trust Company.  They were all made payable to the order of Patrick and dated September 22d, the day before Rice’s death.  One of the drafts on the Fifth Avenue Trust Company was cashed for him by a friend named Potts early Monday morning, and was paid without suspicion.