23 JULY 1904, Page 3

Some doubt appears still to exist as to the fate

of Mr. F. Kent Loomis, Envoy from America to Abyssinia, who dis- appeared as the steamer arrived at Plymouth on June 20th. His body has been recovered at Kingsbridge, Devon ; and it is imagined that he went on deck the night before his arrival, and slipped accidentally over the side. There was however, a contused wound under and behind the right ear, which might have been given by an assassin ; and the Coroner's jury therefore returned an open verdict. -No, reason beyond the wound was assigned at the inquest for suspecting any foul play. The brother of the deceased, who is Acting Under-Secretary of State, repudiates every such suggestion. What a plot, however, one of our sensational novelists could weave out of such an incident,—a plot full of capitalist intrigue, of fierce contests among speculators, and of detective ingenuity in unravelling the skein. The jealousy of capitalists is as bitter as the jealousy of lovers, and if we may trust the stories that occasionally come from the Far West, sometimes leads to violent crime. The finders of a " good thing " in an out-of-the-way region cannot bear to be deprived of the profits which they consider property earned by their own energy.