The Crazy Thing at Princeton

The room, like any small hotel room, was hot. The man pulled the varnished hotel chair up to the table, pulled out a sheet of stationery, and wrote:

"Dearest Ruth,

"I hope I have a chance to make sure you and Elizabeth got back okay in spite of the terrific 101 degrees--as I find no fear--perhaps even peace of mind but a sad lonesomeness--it is strange with a lot of people supposedly looking for me no one yet--"

All over New Jersey, police were looking for him: Henry M. Brooks, 61, described on the teletype as "6 ft. 1, heavyset, squarejawed, with iron-grey hair and heavy mustache." For 30 years, Brooks had been a respected citizen of Greenwich, Conn, and a well-known figure in Wall Street. He was a member of the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, a Harvard man.

A Touch. But all his life he had walked a financial tightrope. He had tried to engineer a pool to raise the price of Devoe & Raynolds common stock in 1926, had gone resoundingly broke to the tune of $3,000,000. He had piled venture on venture, money on money. In the '30s, he had formed a working partnership with Joseph Watkins, a cultivated, gracious man, like Brooks a native of Minnesota, a Harvard graduate, and a financier. They worked together, dined together, and made money together. Then Brooks seemed to lose his touch. Watkins was forced to supply more & more of the working capital. Deals went bad. Brooks tried to recoup and failed. In 1939, Watkins reluctantly called it quits. Watkins got a court judgment for $72,000 he had put up, slapped attachments for $75,000 on Brooks's house. Now other creditors were badgering him.

At the table, the big man wrote: "How could these things have happened--I can't see, unless it's that I haven't allowed for age and the continuous work through the war and under such pressure since, explains that my mind, my ability has slipped . . ."

A Hope. Three days before, Brooks had left his wife Ruth and his daughter Elizabeth vacationing in Maine, and flown to Newark on a last, desperate hope. There he hired a car. He called Watkins at his home in Princeton, asked him to have dinner with him at the Princeton Inn. The shadows lay long on the grass, and the dining room was beginning to fill when Watkins drove up and parked in the drive outside the inn. Brooks walked over to the car.

Brooks wrote: "About the crazy thing at Princeton--although I kept telling him I had to have a definite answer to our relations problem it was still that same maybe--manana--perhaps--or this one little piece, until he just decided to drive away--well--the lack of anything broke up my mind . . ."

Henry Brooks shot his onetime friend and partner twice through the head as he sat in his car. Watkins slumped forward over the wheel.

"I don't understand how it could have been that no one was there or that he started away which caused it--when it was done and no one there I walked some distance to the car and drove away as it meant that I could call you and say I love you, which I so wanted to do."

He drove for long hours. At 4 a.m. he walked wearily into the Albion Hotel at Asbury Park, and asked for a room. He registered as Fred Ellis.

A Stomp. The letter was nearly done. "It is said that in the last moments of one's life one thinks of all the bad things. I feel better in that I had my wish in learning of your safe return to Greenwich --you were so wonderful--understanding --I'm glad the newspapers gave you a decent report ... I can perhaps feel that as my last thoughts didn't turn up a lot of bad that I wasn't too bad in life . . . which God knows is more than bad enough." He added a postscript, "What a nice stamp on yesterday's letter--a sailing ship."

Then he took a shower and put on a pair of two-toned blue pajamas. He left the shower running. Carefully, he spread out three bath towels on the bathroom floor and lay down on them. Gripping the same .32 automatic with which he had shot Joseph Watkins, he put a bullet through his head, just forward of his right ear.

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