Midnight Walk

Early Sunday morning, three days after he attended Laurence Duggan's funeral (see cut), Sumner Welles was found unconscious and nearly frozen to death in a bleak field near his Maryland estate, about a mile south of Washington's city limits.

Neighbors on their way home from church saw the tall, 56-year-old ex-Under Secretary of State, bareheaded and wearing a heavy fur coat, prostrate beside a lonesome road. His face had been scratched by briers, but there was no sign that he had been attacked. His clothes were frozen to his body; apparently he had fallen into a stream, stumbled out and collapsed a little distance beyond. He had lain there some eight hours before he was found.

Taken to the Casualty Hospital in Washington, Welles soon recovered consciousness, said he could not remember what had happened. He was suffering from exposure and frostbitten fingers and toes.

At Welles's magnificent Oxon Hill estate, his valet reported that Welles had worked late that night in his study, and around midnight had told the valet to go to bed, that he was going for a short walk. That was the last any of the servants saw of their reserved, austere employer that night. It was not unusual for Welles to take late walks; he had insomnia. His doctor said that he had been troubled with heart disease ever since he had had a heart attack 18 years ago. Lately he had been deeply upset by the death of Laurence Duggan, who had been his protege and a close friend.

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