Death of Duval

Two doors, side by side and almost exactly alike, might confuse the unaccustomed visitor at the penthouse of the fashionable Manhattan apartment house at 570 Park avenue. In the early morning of a day last week, they confused the tenant of the penthouse. British-born. 35-year-old H. Gordon Duval, publisher of The Club-Fellow, society weekly, rose early to tend his shrubs. He intended to open the bathroom door. But he opened the elevator door instead. He fell the length of the shaft, 14 stories, to instant death.

Club-Fellow readers recalled that Publisher Duval had announced a change of policy when he purchased the weekly last March (TIME, April 9, 16). "Gossip, innuendo and scandal," he pronounced outgrown. Under new management, The Club-Fellow would print "not a line or a word, an innuendo or a criticism from cover to cover, that can offend or displease." Almost immediately, it printed the "well-worn gossip of the "estrangement" of the President and Mrs. Coolidge.

Readers wondered who would succeed Publisher Duval, whether they might expect chit-chat or culture.