e aided in
taking the body from the car and helped to carry it into the living
room and lay it on a couch; he remained until it was certain that
Warden had been killed and nothing could be done. When this had been
established and further confirmed by the doctor who was called, Kondo
and Mrs. Warden looked around for the young man--but he was no longer
there.

The news of the murder brought extras out upon the streets of Seattle,
Tacoma, and Portland at ten o'clock that night; the news took the first
page in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York papers, in competition
with the war news, the next morning. Seattle, stirred at once at the
murder of one of its most prominent citizens, stirred still further at
the new proof that Warden had been a power in business and finance;
then, as the second day's dispatches from the larger cities came in, it
stirred a third time at the realization--for so men said--that this was
the second time such a murder had happened.

Warden had been what was called among men of business and finance a
member of the "Latron crowd"; he had been close, at one time, to the
great Western capitalist Matthew Latron; the properties in which he had
made his wealth, and whose direction and administration had brought him
the respect and attention of other men, had been closely allied with or
even included among those known as the "Latron properties"; and Latron,
five years before, had been murdered. The parallel between the two
cases was not as great as the newspapers in their search for the
startling made it appear; nevertheless, there was a parallel. Latron's
murderer had been a man who called upon him by appointment, and
Warden's murderer, it appeared, had been equally known to him, or at
least equally recommended. Of this as much was made as possible in the
suggestion that the same agency was behind the two.

The statement of Cora Warden, indicating that Warden's death might have
been caused by men with whom he was--or had been at one
time--associated, was compared with the fact that Latron's death had
occurred at a time of fierce financial stress and warfare. But in this
comparison Warden's statement to his wife was not borne out. Men of
high place in the business world appeared, from time to time during the
next few days, at Warden's offices and even at his house, coming from
other cities on the Coast and from as far east as Chicago; they felt
the need, many of them, of looking after interests