While the bell was ringing Charles F. Jones, the confidential valet of
the aged man, was waiting, he says, in an adjoining room until a cone
saturated with chloroform, which he had placed over the face of his
sleeping master, should effect his death.
_Did_ Jones murder Rice? If so, was it, as he claims, at the instigation
of Albert T. Patrick?
These two questions, now settled in the affirmative forever, so far as
criminal and civil litigation are concerned, have been the subject of
private study and public argument for more than seven years.
Mr. Rice was a childless widower, living the life of a recluse, attended
only by Jones, who was at once his secretary, valet and general servant.
No other person lived in the apartment, and few visitors ever called
there. Patrick was a New York lawyer with little practice who had never
met Mr. Rice, was employed as counsel in litigation hostile to him, yet
in whose favor a will purporting to be signed by Rice, June 30, 1900,
turned up after the latter's death, by the terms of which Patrick came
into the property, amounting to over seven million dollars, in place of
a charitable institution named in an earlier will of 1896.
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