On the day following the notorious Kenwick murder trial, the Mont-Mer papers carried little other news. A special representative from the "San Francisco Clarion" and several Los Angeles journalists fed their copy over the wires and had extras out in both cities by eight o'clock.
"Kenwick Acquitted" was the head-line which his own paper ran, with his picture and one of Richard Glover sharing prominence upon the front page. And because of Kenwick's previous connection with this daily and the fact that the two star witnesses for the defense were well known in the Bay region, the "Clarion's" story was the most comprehensive and colorful.
It opened with a report of Dayton's speech which, it appeared, had electrified every one in the court-room, including the prisoner himself. But it had been unnecessary for the attorney to make a plea for his client, after the quietly dramatic testimony of the last witness for the defense. In thrilling terms the "Clarion" described Kenwick's final service at the front, when he had made his way alone across No-Man's-Land and saved for France one of her most gallant officers, and had given in exchange that thing which is more precious than life itself. Only through an accident, which had killed the man who had meant to batten upon his misery, had he been released from a pitiable bondage.
Having thus sketched in his "human interest," the reporter proceeded to tell the story which had proved so overwhelmingly convincing to the jury and audience. How, in his skilfully planned narrative, Richard Glover had transposed the identities of the two dead men. How, upon receiving his commission from Everett Kenwick, he had first turned over his charge to Ralph Regan, admitted by his own sister to be an addict to drugs and a ne'er-do-well whom she was helping, in a surreptitious way, to support. How the accounts, forwarded from the Kenwick lawyer in New York, showed that Regan must have received out of the arrangement only his living and enough of the drug to keep him satisfied but not wholly irresponsible. How, upon his own infrequent visits to the patient (whom he himself had conducted across the continent instead of the mythical Bailey) Glover had foreseen two months before the tragedy that Regan could no longer be relied upon and had told him that he was about to be dismissed.
How he had then secured the services of one Edward Marstan, whom he believed to be without family, and who represented himself as a physician in good standing but heavily in debt. How the arrangement had been made that he assume charge of the patient at the Mont-Mer depot, whither Kenwick was to be brought up from a day's sojourn in Los Angeles by Regan. How the physician, accompanied by his wife, had arrived from San Francisco that very day; how Marstan had quarreled with his wife, and leaving her unconscious in a room at Rest Hollow, had gone into town to get his charge. How, on the way out from town he had been killed in an accident while driving his own car, and how, by a curious fate, Kenwick had been restored to sanity and had found his way back alone to his former asylum.
The story then went on to relate how Ralph Regan, evidently desperate over his loss of a home and drug supplies, had returned to Rest Hollow by stealth the following night, either to make a plea to the new caretaker or to search for drugs, and of how, finding the house dark and apparently deserted, he had forsaken all hope of reinstatement and had ended his life with the revolver which he had brought either for murder of Marstan or for suicide. The shot which he fired, the paper stated, had evidently been used to test his own nerve or the cartridges; and it had done its work. Letters written to his sister a few weeks before the tragedy, and produced by her in court, indicated a depression amounting to acute melancholia.
Recalled to the witness-stand and subjected to crucial cross-examination, the gardener at Rest Hollow had broken down in his testimony, admitted that he was afraid of Glover, and that although he had been in too dazed a condition on the fatal night to examine the body of the dead man, he knew Ralph Regan to have been the former attendant and had frequently talked to him about the patient's symptoms, about which Regan appeared to know little and care less.
The narrative then went on to tell how Richard Glover had discovered among the possessions of his charge certain manuscripts which he deemed suitable for publication, and how he had, after the death of the elder Kenwick, sold one of them under the name of Ralph Regan, choosing a real rather than a fictitious name in order that he might shift the theft to helpless shoulders if it were ever discovered. How he had, with the Kenwick capital entrusted to him, invested in large realty holdings which had completely absorbed his attention. How he had padded his accounts in order to wring extra money from Everett Kenwick under the guise of "special treatments" for the patient and so on. How on the night of the fatality he had driven to Rest Hollow from Los Angeles to give some final instructions to the new employee, and how, stumbling upon the dead body of Regan, he had been shocked to find himself involved in a tragedy. How he had then cold-bloodedly decided to have the body identified as Kenwick, partly to save himself from the charge of criminal neglect and partly because he knew that Everett Kenwick had left in his will a bequest that was to come to him "for faithful service" upon the death or recovery of his brother. How, not dreaming that his charge would ever recover, he had thus used his death as a means of gaining extra funds which he badly needed just at that time.
How he had accordingly selected certain of the patient's personal possessions with which he had been entrusted, to deceive the coroner. How all the subsequent action had seemed to play into his hands: the coroner's easy acquiescence in the suicide theory and the identity of the body; the chance discovery, through Arnold Rogers, that the story of Kenwick's self-destruction had already been accepted by the community.
How, preceding the coroner's inquest, Glover had spent the morning tracing the antecedent action of the tragedy and had heard of the accident which had killed Marstan. How he had erred in suspecting that the real victim of the tragedy was Kenwick and that the attendant had had the body identified as his own and then made his escape, fearing to communicate the news of the disaster to his employer. How he, Glover, had been startled to discover later that Kenwick was not only alive but had apparently recovered his mental health.