With profoundest sympathy, and exhortations to fortitude, calmness, and resignation, I am ever

Sincerely your friend,

Marinus B. Willett.

So on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1928, Marinus Bicknell Willett visited the room of Charles Dexter Ward at Dr. Waite’s private hospital on Conanicut Island. After the interchange of a few strained formalities, a new element of constraint crept in, as Ward seemed to read behind the doctor’s masklike face a terrible purpose which had never been there before.

Ward actually turned pale, and the doctor was the first to speak. “More,” he said, “has been found out, and I must warn you fairly that a reckoning is due.”

“Digging again, and coming upon more poor starving pets?” was the ironic reply. It was evident that the youth meant to show bravado to the last.