yesterdaysprint:

The Daily Times, Philadelphia, May 31, 1922

White Plains, N.Y., May 31 - “What is the price of honor?” This question, often raised in fact and fiction, will be answered in the Ward mystery.

Walter S. Ward, rich scion of the family of bakery magnates, will tell. He is under arrest, charged with slaying Clarence Peters, who Ward says was a blackmailer.

More than that, Ward declares he paid $30,000 in hush money to the blackmail ring to which he says Peters belonged.

And he was willing to pay $75,000 more, could be obtain in!

That makes $105,000 as the value that Ward placed on his secret - a secret that affected the honor of himself, or possibly a friend or intimate.

But now more than $105,000 is at stake - liberty, possibly life itself!

And the only thing, it appears, that can save Ward will be the revelation of the very same secret he guarded at a price of $30,000 actually spent, of $75,000 more he was willing to spend, of the life of the man he says was collecting the hush money.

Will Ward tell his secret - a secret whose revelation seriously affects someone’s honor? If not, will his loyal and beautiful wife, to whom he says he told all, reveal it to save him from the cell, possibly from the death chair?

It looks as if the world must know this secret of dishonor before public opinion will permit Ward’s acquittal.

“What is the price of honor?”

How far will the Wards go to keep the world from knowing their secret?

Journal Gazette, Mattoon, Illinois, May 21, 1926

Two years after he was acquitted of murdering Clarence Peters, a young sailor, Walter S. Ward found himself back in the news. Peters parents brought a $50,000 damage suit against Ward, but days before the case was to be tried Ward disappeared. 

The secret in the first article, thought probably to involve gambling (or a woman) in some way, was never revealed.