A GAME OF CARDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14984, 4 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

A GAME OF CARDS.

hep. life AS THE STAKE.

WEALTHY WOMAN SMUGGLER

Rendered desperate at the thought of the. humiliation of being publicly prosecuted for attempted smuggling, Mrs. Edwin Carson, wife of a Califomian millionaire, and ono of the leaders of society on the Pacific coast, committed suicide at a New York hotel. She had evidently left the decision of life and death to chance, for on a table in her room was a pack of cards laid out in a style which indicated that she had played a game of solitaire with herself, with life a.i the stake?, and had succeeded all but for the final ace. Mrs. Carson had only just returned from Europe after a long tour in the tar East. She was present in India during the Durbar ceremony,. and had been writing the story of her travels for the Boston Christian Science Monitor. She bought the pearls in India, but on landing in New York she told the Customs officers, in reply to the usual question, that she had nothing to declare. Collector Loeb'f agents, however, have extraordinary sources of informatibn, and the officers were well aware of the fact that the necklace was in her possession. Her trunks were searched, and slid finally confessed that she had the jewel?. She was immediately taken into custody, but was so terribly distressed that after confiscating the pearls the authorities released her on bail to a small amount, and saw her safely to the fashionable Broztell Hotel in Fifth Avenue.

Late in the evening she telephoned to her solicitor to ask if "her arrest would bo in the newspapers, and what ho thought would be her punishment. The solicitor confessed that sho was liable to imprisonment. During the night she evidently brooded over her position, and could not bear the disgrace of being convicted as a smuggler. Next morning she took some strong cord which had been used to fasten • her luggage, and tying one end round a heavy trunk, she fastened the other round her neck, and juried herself through the window. Tlie room Wing on the eighth storey, the body was not observed for some time, and she must have been dead over an hour when she was cut down.

Mrs. Carson was a very wealthy woman, so that her suicide could not have been dno to financial worries. On the writingtable in her room the police fonud some sheets of manuscript on which slip had evidently been engaged before she made up her mini to end her life.

She had nearly £500 in notes and gold in her possession, as well as a letter of credit for £1000 drawn on Messrs. Brown, Shipley and Co., of London.