Unusual Detective Cases

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T ;+h~emto believe Doctor Seder had bepn kidnaped! "Darlinr, the newspaper here says Doctor Soder was kidnapned," 1 remarked by way of conversation. Johnnie brushed a hand throuzh his hair. "Oh, that's a lot o f stuff! I don't think he was-probably wandered off somewhere, like some of the newspapers a n d Lieutenant Swann said before. . . . Anway, I've decided to go back to Huntington !"

On the way back, Jolhnnie barely spoke to me. He seemed etxremely mo y, worried. "1 hat's wrong, Johnnie?" I asked. "Nothing," he said shortly. When we arrived in Huntington Johnnie learned that his sister, Dot, was alone with her sick child, so we decidled to go over and stay with her. From then on, events passed with stunning rapidity. T h a t night, around eight o'clock, a s we talked with Dot, we heard newsboys shouting: "EXTRA! EXTRA!" Something important must htve happened, I thought, for the Huntington papers seldom issued an Extra." Johnnie arose, went to the door and whistled for a b y . A few seconds later he returned, bent over the paper. There was an odd expression in his face. "Why what's happened, Johnnie?" I asked. "The Seder relatives got a ransom note from the kidnaper!" he replied tonelessly. "That poor man!" Dot said. ' 3 e n he was kidnaped after all! -I wonder who would be as mean as that!" Johnnie picked up his hat. "I'm going out for a beer. Any of you want anvthing?" We shook our heads. "Johnnie's been acting so strallgely," I remarked to Dot when he had left. "Maybe you know your brother better than I do. What is wrong Dot? H a s he discovemd he's not in love with me?" Fearfully I awaited her answer. Dot laughed. "Don't be foolish, honey. I guess he's worried about not having a jab, and being married and not being able to have a real honeymoon." The next morning Johnnie seemed to be in better spirits. At Dot's supgestion we decided to walk over and insnect a cute little house near by, which was vacant.

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I T WAS a darling house, and I envisionled the days of happiness we were to spend there together. About an hour later we returned to Dot's house to find Mother Travis standing in the living-room, her face sickeningly white. She seemed to have aged ten years. Tears were streaming down her face, and her eyes were pools of misery. From the near-bv bedroom I heard Dot sobhing. Daggers seemed to stab through my 'heart. "What on earth has happ e n ~ ? , Mother?" I manaped to ask. "The police--the G-Men-this Vetthe detectives came terli felfow-and to the house last n i ~ h tand told me to tell Johnnie to ~ i v ehirnqelf up!" she said in a choking voice. I felt a s if I had suddenly turned to stone! For a minute my lips refuqed to move. "Why-What hasJohnnie done?" Wordlessly Mother 'Travis sank

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MY HONEYMOON IN THE GALLOWS t o get some money from his landlord, Doctor Seder, by taking him away and holding him for ransom. We talked and drank a lot. but I remember that Booth didn't drink so DOCTOR SEDER FOUND NEAR much. DEATH IN ABANDONED MINE "That night; Booth said h e was ARNETT BOOTH CONFESSES going to l h r r o w his fathers car, that KIDNAPING he had all the plans laid, and all we NAMES JOHN TRAVIS AND O R had to do was to help. Booth came .... VILLE ADKINS AS A C back with the car, drove us down COMPLICES t o Eighteenth Street and Tenth AveThe room reeled around me. There nue, and told us to wait for him. I was no feeling in my face, my kept telling Orville we'd better get on hands. My heart seemed to give a home, but neither of us had any cargreat beat, then stop completely. . fare, so we decided to wait for Booth. The tears suddenly flooding my face. In a little while he d r o w up in the roadster. Some one was sitting np "It's not true!" I screamed. "It's not true! I was with Johnnie all in the roadster. He called out: "Let the time. How could he have done Travis ride the rumble. H$ drunk and making too much noise. i t ?" I got in hte rumble, qnd Orville Mother Travis raised her head, looked a t Johnnie with swollen eyes. got up front. Then we drove off. I heard them talking up front, then a Jo'hnnie stool still, silent. "Johnnie, is this true? Did you sudden commotion. The car stooped, help this Booth kidnap Doctor and I heard Booth say: "One of Seder?" Mother asked, the tears still you birds put your coat over his head. quick!' " rolling down her cheeks. "I jumped out of the car. It was I saw Johnnie's lips tremble; then parked on the highway leading to he hung his head. "Mother, it's true," he said husk- Wayne. I saw this old man with ily. "I didn't know what I was do- white hair and glasses. It was Docing. I was drunk. Booth had made tor Seder." I wanted to yell, but the sound Orville and me drink over a pint of whiskey apiece. Neither of us knew wouldn't come. I heard Johnnie sayihg : what we were doing." "I *told Booth I wasn't going to The awful realization hammered a t my brain. My 'hus,knd-the man I throw a coat over the old man, that lowd so dearly-a kidnaper! I he'd better give u p the whole job. couldn't .believe it! It was all a Booth got mad and hollered: 'What the Hell i s the matter with you?nightmare. I would awake soon. But the misery, the rising terror getting yellow?' Doctor Seder bein Johnnie's voice were too real to Ean pleading with him to release him. Booth threatened to hit him with be a dream. He turned to me. ''What his fist if he didn't shut UD. shall I do. Sunnv?" he. asked. . -* * + "Finally Booth started &e car up 1 LOOKED at him through m again and we drove off. Some time almost blinding film of tears. later we pulled into a field and stop"Tell us what happened, Johnnie. ped beside a log cabin. All of us Then we can better decide what you went in. Doctor Seder was so frightmust do." I managed to tell him. ened he could hardly talk. He kept And so Johnnie, 'his eyes like a hunt- pleading with Booth to let him go ed aniv'al. began to pour out to back, that he would ,be caug'ht and Mother and mle the details of that punished for what he was doing. terrible event-details which, I feel But Booth only told him to shut up. sure, are told in these pages for the Rooth got from Doctor Seder the infirst tirre in their entirety. formation that he had some money "MotFer," Johnnie said, "you re- hidden in the pantry, so he and Admlembcr I not up around noon on kins decided to go back after it. that first day of November. After Before leaving Booth turned to Dr. breakfact I met Orville Adkins and Sedcr and said: we T T P ~ ~ : P over ~ to Arnett Booth's '"We don't w a n t you to croak on agartmmt. I had m e t Booth u s too soon, Doc, so we'll bring you t h r o ~ ~ ~Orville. ht and he was alwavs some bedclothing back. It won't be talkinr ahout his schemes to make any too comfortable where we'll put somp eacv morlPv. He painted some you.' Thev went out, leavinc me to prpttv victures." guard Doctor Seder. I felt the He turned to me. "And, Sunny, I whisk-- bepin dying off, and Doctor wanted sonle mnqey quick, so we Seder asked me who J was and who uid PO+ married ! Anwav, ,we be- mv parents were and whv I was don drinkinv a t Booth's place. We ina this. I told him I ma.: from Deank iln mhat he had, and then he troit. He told we all this was a nt ont for some more, urg-ing me t ~ r r i h l e t'hinq. and asked me if I drink. thpt all the w h i s k was on would pray with him. I told him I him. I vaouelv remember he b e ~ a n would. I made him comfortable as I talk ing about how easy i t would be c'ould by placing some old clothes on into a chair, buried h e r * f a c e in her lrms, held out a newspaper towards me. I snatched a t it, saw the huge, screaming headlines:

the floor. Then he prayed an awful nice prayer for me. He began asking me a s to who the other men were, and said he was almost positive that the baldheaded one was a man by the name of Booth, and one of his tenants. "In a little while, that is, somewhere around midnight, Booth and Adkins returned with some bedclothes and some more whisky. We carried Doctor Seder out to this abondoned coal mine. Booth told me to stay with the Doctor and h a m him write a ransom note. When they left I fixed the bedclothes for Doctor Seder, put an overcoat around his legs, and told him t h a t he could write the note in the morning. Neither of us slept t h a t night. "Several times Doctor Seder knelt in prayer, and two or three times I joined him. When morning came I told Doctor Seder he could write the note. Shortly afterwards, Booth and Adkins came back. I gave Booth the note and he began cursing about a double-cross. Said that doctor Seder had put in the note he was being held in a cave twenty miles south of Wayne, West Virginia. Booth handed me a tablet with a pencil and told me to have Doctor Seder write this, a s well as I can remember: " 'I have ;been kidnaped. Four men forced me into a car. I was on an allnight drive from Huntington. I don't know where I a m at. They want $30,000. F o r my sake meet their demands for you know what it means.' "All this time Booth stayed at the top of the mine and didn't come down I got the note and took i t up t o him. Booth read i t and handed me a n envelope with a special delivery stamp on i t and told me to tell Doctor Seder t o address it; then he wrote out a note for me to recopy and reword, giving the denominations of the bills, demanded. I gave the envelope to Doctor Seder, and he addressed i t to his son, a t St. Paul, Minnesota. "Booth told me to come on out, that he'd ride me back to Hnntington, and that Doctor Seder couldn't porsihly crawl out of the cave alone. When we r o t back to Huntindon he took f i e letter in the snecial-delivcrv envelone and said he'4 mail it, bnt for me to be sure and write the other note and mail it. T'his I never did. That ransom note the P e d ~ r s p.nt must have comle from Booth. He kept calling me and Adkins and tried to get me to go to some bridye with him. His idea, Mother. I'm sure. was to bum^ me 04. Tuesday Orville and I staved drunk. Tho next dav we talked about rescuing Doctor Sleder. hut that afternoon Root"l met us a t Fourtwrlth and Tenth and told us he had killed Doctor Seder after beating him! up! You know the (Continued on page 5 0 )

SAT in the tiny gallery at the rear of the a r t shop nervously smoking a cigar and waiting impatiently for the arrival of the Countess. Pictures covered the walls and were stacked to the ceiling in the rear of the shop. Some of them were worth moderate sums. Some of them worth absolutely nothing. But that was a fact I kept well concealed from t h e art lovers whose names adorned my sucker list.

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I glanced down my watch. The Countess was late. If she failed in her mission I was going t o be out a hatful of money. Whereas, if everything went according to my plans, I was going to turn the swiftest and hugest profit of my shady career as an a r t dealer. My heart picked up a beat as I heard footfalls in the front of the dhop. I jammed out the cigar in a hammered silver ashtray. I adjusted my conservative gray cravat. I drew a deep breath, assumed my most professianal manner and left the gallery. In the gloom of the shop stood the Countess, her little gloved hand nesting on the arm of a distinguishedappearing man of middl? age. The melandholv of the dimly lighted room m e w h a t by the was dispelled presence of the counkss. She was tall and slender. Her hair was dark, her face pale. Her lips were flashing red. She nodded to me coIdIy, in a manner of the nobility greeting a tradesman, and said, "Monsieur Danton, bhis is Mr. Wentworth;, He is interested in your VeIasquez. I gave out witrh my maximum bow. I rubbed my hands and assunned my m& obsequious expression.

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"Ah," I said.

''me Velasquez. I negret greatly that I have not yet taken possession of the masterpiece. But if Mr. Wentwoirth will come shall in again-say, in a week-I have i t for him." Some of the yielding softness disappeared from the eyes of the Countess, and she glared a t me. I ignored her, transferring all my at, tention t o Wentworth. \Ventworth stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Naturally," he said, "before investing a large sum of money in the picture, I must be sure of its authenticitv." " ~ u tnaturally," I agreed. "If I can show you that I purchased i t from Mr. Ralph Dusken, you would be sure of the genuineness?" " D u s h n ?" said Wentworth. "Why, of course." Which, considwing t h a t Ralpk Dusteen was one of the top a r t experts .qf the country, wasn't at all surprising.

"Very well," I said. "In a week, then. Of course, I must ask you to be discreet, but I shall prove to you t h a t Dusteen is selling me the painting." The Countess was still glaring a t me'as Wentworth, taking her arm, walked her out of the shop. I went back t o the ga!lery, lit another cigar and felt as happy a s any man who stands on the threshold of a hundred thousand dollars. HALF an hour later, the Countess returned. She strode into the g a l l a q , and shed her regal manner. "Listen you dope!" she said. "What's the idea? I never heard of What anyone as screwy as you. you t y i n g to pull. The old doublecross. Her a m t s were Brooklyn rather than a o s e of the Court .of St. James. She was good and mad. She kept storming away a t me-and- all I did was to look down a t her and keep

Many more "Old Mastersware sold for big money than ever were painted !

smiling blandly. "You'll get your cut," I told her. "I'm arranging this set-up. there'^ a pile of dough a t stake, and I'm ing i t m there'll be no slips a t all. "What was the idea of telling Wentworth you didn't have that phony picture?" she demanded. "I know very we11 it's stacked over there against the wall. I went to a lot of trouble contacting that guy, and I'm not going to have-" I waved her to silence. "I M1 you everything's O.K. Wait a week and col~lect. In the meantime, don't ask questions." She regard&,, me suspiciously. "Well, all right, was her final d s cision. "But don't t r y to pull any-" "Go back to your castle in Bensonhurst, Countess," I told ,,her. "1'11 call you when I'm ready. Counkss' beautiful lips The framed an ugly word and she left indigantly. I grinned after her and puffed luxuriously on my cigar. On this particular sale I had worked out a brand new fool-proof angle. The Countess would eat her ugly word before i t was over. Two days later the Countess, still baffled by my lying to Wentworth about m y possession of the Velasquez, happened to be in the gallery when Ralph Dusteen entened He nodded to me curtly. He was an honest a r t expert. He didn't approve of chislers like myself. "Danton," he said, "I hea: you've a ~ e n u i n eVelasqm for sale. "Right,' I said. "The price is me hundred thousand dollars." The Countess stared a t me a s if I were insane. I knew what was going on in her head. To sell Dusteen a phony Velasquez was, on tfne face of A half hour's exit, utterly mad. amination in his laboratory would demonstrate the picture was a fake. I dug out the picture, placed i t on an easel and turned on the bright light. Dustsen squinted a t it. But that didn't worry me. From the viewpoint of the naked eye, the painting was dose enough t o the real thing to fool even Dusteen. I t would be a differeht matter in his laboratory. Dusteen grunted. "Wdl," he said at last, "1'11 ta,k" it oh trhe usual terms, of course. The usual berms meant simply h t Dusteen grave me his aheck while I

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1 COMMITTED FORGERY ON CANVAS gave him a form contract which prcvided that if the picture in anyway dissatisfied him he could return i t for a full refund. This is usual with most a r t dealers when transacting business among fiemselves. Dusteen wrote out the check and departed with the picture. The Countess grabbed my a m and swone. "You fool! Dusteen will know that's a phony within the hour. You'll have to give him back that check or we'll all go to the can. You-" "I fully intend giving him back &he check," I told her. "Just keep calm."

out a check for one hundred thousand dollars. I marked i t on the back FOT Velasquez Painting. A few days later, I called the Countess. "All right," I, told her. ",Get in touch with Wentworth. Tell him I have the Velasquez for h i m Bring him in tomorrow." Mr. Wentworth arrived the following day, along with the Countess. He took a long look a t the Velasquez. He took a longer look a t the canceled check I had ,given Dusteen when Dusteen had returned the phony Old Master.

appeared-who could doubt the validity of the picture? Certainly not a dilletnate like Wentworth. Yet Wentworth was still cautious. He told me he'd forgotten an appointment nearby, that he'd be back well within an hour. He had some business to attend to that he couldn't attend to by telephone. "Why, certainly," I told him. "I'll still be here." I let him go out-and again the Countess stormed a t me. But I told her not to worry-that Wentworth would be back

She stared a t me, bewildered. ''Then why did you sell i t to him? Why didn't you hold i t for Wentworth? He'd never know it was a fake." "Take it easy," I said;, "I'm going to sell it to Wentworth. At that moment I refused to tell her more than that. Enraged, the Countess went home to Brooklyn. Two days later Dusteen returned, as I had known he would. Passing several derogatory remarks about my business ethics, he gave me back the phony Velasquez and demanded his money back. Without protest I wrote

I had retrieved the canceled voucher, of course, had it in my gallery. I t showed that one hundred thousand dollars had been paid to Ralph Dusteen, the eminent a r t expert, and the back of the check bore the line, For Velasquez painting, and also bore the signature of Ralp Dusteen. Wentworth himself had done business with Dusteen, and could see that the signature was not a forgery, that i t was absolutely authentic. Dusteen was beyond reproach. If he had sold me the Velasquez for a hundred grand-as i t most certainly

And back he came-in a little more than fifteen minutes. I sensed what he had done-contacted the bank to see that the hundred-thousand-doll a r check really had been deposited by Dusteen, a s of course i t had been. Wentworth handed over his own check for one hundred and five thouextra supposedly sand dollars-the representing my profit on the dealand took the Velasquez home with him The Countess, now that she understood my complicated machinations, stared a t me in sheer admiration.

THE TRICKSof the Countess would

fool most of our male patrons.

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I COMMITTED FORGERY ON CANVAS

YOUNG BLAKELYknew how to handle women the -and Baroness seemed to like him.

"Danton," she said, "you're wonderful! Let's celebrate." We did, and in fine style.

Her tricks-and she had a bagful of them-would fool most of our male a r t patrons. * * * There are, in New York City, a r t dealers. Of course,, MacI SPENT several years in the a r t many Rehn, Neumann, Kraushaar, racket. Some of those years were beth, Walker, Ferargil, Alfred lush, some were bad. But they were Maynard Stieglitz, Bernard Bereson, and some never a s good as since the advent of others, are absolutely authentic. But Hitler to power. are more numerous a r t dealers, All over Europe, masterpieces dis- there I'd say, who would not hesitate to appeared. In all probability they transact a little shady business. went to furnish the luxurious palaces These shady a r t dealers exact exof the Nazi masters. Anway, they disappeared from the museums and orbitant commissions from painterschateaux where they had hung for sometimes a s much as one-third of the purchase price - for making sales. so long. Refugees poured into this country. They are guilty of polite misrepreSome of them had salvaged legitimate sentations, market rigging, promotion paintings as their stake in the new of incompetent artists and mainteworld. Some of them carried worth- nance of fantastic valuations on less paint on worthless canvas. But ,worthless canvases which guillible coleither way i t was gravy for the ille- lectors have somehow been convinced a r e master-pieces. gitimate a r t dealer. For the suckers, those wonderful These tricks, of course, a r e among little art-loving suckers on whom we the milder sort of swindles. The preyed, firmly believed any tale we major duplicity is practised by antold them about the refugees' paint- other large group of which the Counings. We'd been running pretty thin tess and myself were not the lowon stories to account for our sudden liest members. For instance, we had our clever possession of European masterpieces, but the arrival of the refugees gave young painters who could copy the us one, written, edited and all ready masters so well that the masters themselves wouldn't know the differto go to press. The Countess, nee Annie Whalen ence. Not all of that hundred grand of Bensonhurst, who had been work- I collected for the Velasquez went into ing with me since I started, quite my own pocket. In addition to the Countess' cut, a often impersohated a refugee herself. She would use tears to prevent the big slice went tq Walter Blakely, a sucker from examining the supposed- brilliant young artist who had forged ly smuggled masterpiece too carefully. the painting. Then there was the

matter of forged references and attestations to the genuineness of the picture which supposedly had been issued by reputable a r t critics. The number of phonys which have been foisted on wealthy a r t morons is utterly incredible. For instance, a t least 2,000 Van Dycks have been bought in America in the past fifty years. I t is a well known fact that Van Dyck painted only 70 pictures in all his lifetime!

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IN the old days is was a simple matter to doctor a freshly painted canvas with resin and lime juice so that i t took on the appearance of antiquity. With modern methods of detection, this is easily exposed. The new ways are more complicated, but well worth the trouble if it means unloading a n alleged Old Master on a n unsuspecting a r t lover. The safest method today is to first procure a genuinely old, but worthless, painting. The forger will then trace the pattern of the age cracks, later washing off the paint. Next, using pigments of the period-and that is most important, as I found out to my sorrow-he paints a picture characteristic of a Master. Before the new painting has dried, a pinpoint is used to scratch the pattern of cracks traced from the original. Then, like one of mother's pies, the canvas is put in the oven to bake. This baking process causes the pigments to crack where they have been scratched. Mellowed tints to give the impression of great age a r e achieved by skilful applications of wood ashes, smoke and licorice juice. Phony fly specks a r e created by spattering a mixture of gum and India ink on the picture. A mildewed appearance is easily brought about by simply leaving the canvas in a damp cellar for a month or more. I n my years in the business F had resorted to all these devices and several more. However during one prosperous period, we didn't even have to bother to doctor the pictures. Late in 1941 the Countess met a Baroness. The Baroness, though, was legitimate Almanac de Gotha, a pretty blonde woman from Belgium whose husband had died in an air raid. The Baroness arrived in this country broke, owning only a few clothes. However, the Countess discovered that their chateau had contained, a t one time, several thousand dollars' worth of old masters. Of course, they had all been stolen by the Germans, but a s the Countess figured, who could ever prove that? Subtly, the Countess had broached the matter of a deal to the Baroness only to be indignantly turned down. Thereupon, the Countess arranged a little party to soften the Baroness up. I decided to stage the party in the stndio of Blakely, the a r t forger. In

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I COMMITTED FORGERY ON CANVAS addition to being handy with a brush, Blakely was tall and rather goodlooking. And, believe me, he had a brrific "line" and could make himself most appealing to women. He was absolutely unscrupulous. Blakely had his studio looking its b s t . I stood the expense on the drinks and the eats. A t the outset the real noblewoman was cold and distant. However, the ahampagne soon loosened her up. I got her alone in a e r n e r of the stud10 and made my business proposition. "Baroness," I said, "you have no money. And money's a very important. thing. You'll agree to that, I think. Now, what I am about to suggest will bring you relatively large sums and you will have nothing to do expect to announce that you salvaged a number of those paintings from your chateau when the Nazis came in." "But 'why?" she asked. "How can that bring me money?" L'Be~au~e," I told her, "we'll have Blakely here forge them. If you guarantee them as genuine, a s the pictures you brought with you from Belgium, you'll,,have no trouble disposing of them. She shook her head vehemently.

She would have nothing t o do with such a crooked scheme. I fillecl the glasses again. I t developed into quite a party. One of the developments was that Blakely made a sketch of the Baroness. Nearly always he dressed like a conservative young businessman, but he was just phony enough to put on a velveteen jacket and a tam. He knew how to excite the admiration and attention of women. We left him alone with the Baroness, and they continued to chat and drink, and talk over Continental life, and he won the Baroness completely over. We'd never have any trouble with her again. With her guarantee backing every forgery from Walter's brush, we had no trouble disposing of our phonys to those society a r t lovers who would -never doubt the word of a fullblooded Baroness. POSSIBLY the most baffling ang!e to a layman regarding the a r t racket is the fact that experts admittedly can not ell the true from the false on many occasions. The scientist, dealin such matters a s pigments, utilizing infra-red ray, will be f a r more accurate.

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Well, then, you ask, if this is true, what is the value of a painting? The a r t dealers have a n answer t o that. A painting is worth whatever you can get for it. Possibly the greatest swindle was perpetrated by Jean Charles Millet, grandson of the famous artist. Jean Charles inherited a number of canvases painted by pupils of his grandfather-all, of course, done in the Millet style. Millet, junior, went into partnership with Cazot, a house painter of uncanny proficiency, and set up a s a dealer in masterpieces. First they signed the elder Millet's name to the pupils' paintings and had little troubl? in disposing of them. The racket went along so well that they branched out and not only forged Millet's name but that of Carot, Manet, Sisley and the other members of the Barbizon school. These pictures were sold t o dealers for sums ranging from six to ten thousand dollars. The dealers, in turn, resold them a t staggering prices. One was sold t o a "connoisseur" for $60,000. A British Museum dug down into its bank account and laid $97,000 on the line for a guaranteed Millet. Later, the grandson boasted i t was a fake and proved i t before the redfaced assembled experts who had pronounced it genuine. Other experts, ridiculed and harassed in the courtroom, conceded i t was impossible t o tell the originals from the forgeries, t h a t it was impossible to estimate how many phonys had been sold. There is, in New York City, a man that a r t dealers fear and respect. He is Dr. Maximillian Toch, known a s the Old Master detective. Dr. Toch applies the scientific method to uncover fake paintings. A t this task he has been eminently successful. Paints, to estimate their age and composition, are subjected t o various tests by Dr. Toch. Photomicrography, X-ray, ultra-violet ray and infra-red a r e a few of the scientific devices utilized to expose the fakers. One of the most important clues in the detection of a fake masterpiece is "brushwork." The brushwork of all great painters is absolutely distinctive. Each lays on the pigment in his own way, which is almost a s individual a s fingerprints a n d can not be duplicated by a forger. Rere, photomicrographs of X-ray a r e used. Perhaps the most famous of these tests was proving that Virgin of the Rocks was a genuine Da Vinci-a fact which had been seriously questioned. Examination of the brushwork demonstrated conclusively that the pail ing could only (bet h a t of the Itali master.

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SALESGIRL FOR CRIME

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HIS'LL teach you to talk Jackie," he said slowly, punctut w much!" With a vicious ating his words with blows, lunge the heavy-set man "you'll know enough to not go slapped the pretty young girl around spilling your lip!" Tom had been standing'lookimg on squarely across the face. She in enjoyment, his eyes thin slits of "Ben, Ben!" the girl pleaded miser- sadistic exultation. He smiled evilly screamed in pain 'as he shook her ably, and fell the g r d . and nodded. Without a word he and threw her against the car Ben turned to the man with him. dragged the ,girl into the car and got by which they were standing. in. "Get her away from 'the park her:; Ben watched him drive off, then "Maybe next t i m e, Miss You know What to do with her. Tom. ! turned back to our car. S is eyes

T h e g0 a 1

MY EVENINGS were spent wilbh Roy in a whiirl t pleasure.

swept over me as he spoke. "And you, sister!" he sneered in tones that made me cringe. "Now maybe you'll know, too. You'll know when you've got to be quiet.," He sat in our car and motioned for Roy to drive aff. We sped down the road of Mill Creek Park, in Youngstown, Ohio, that evening and ahead of us I could follow the berms of light from the car Tom was dl-iving, the car in which the little redhead, beaten up so brutally, had been dumped. Suddenly those lights turned off up one of the side r d a I sat there in the front seat of our car, numb and silent. Hours later I was pacing my room. What must I do? How could I go on with this? How had i t all begun? But a s I thought i t over, it seemed to we there was no certain day when it had all begun. There was no time I could say it all started. Everything had just happened from day to day.

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MAYBE it all started away back in my home town. I was discontented in that sleepy little village in southern Ohio. I t was dull, ,I thought, stodgy and depressing. Poverty hung over the whole town and blanketed it. There was never any excitement.. Our town was just a little blot on a worn-out agricultural section. When, a t 16, I finished high school, I determined that eome way or other I was going to get away. It wasn't h t I was particularly

SALESGIRL FOR CRIME

was rich old maids, the game a racket unpopular. I was, they all said, the 'prettiest girl in our graduating class. Rut I didn't have the things the other girls had. My clothes, for instance. And I had no real "dates" while I was in high school. Everybody said 1 was too young, since most of my class was a year o r so older than I. And then I hadn't the clothes or money to go around much. My mother had died eight years before; and I d d remember my father only by what others said of him. I had been shifted regularly between two of my uncles' homes there in town. They felt they had done their duty in getting me through high sdool; the extras they couldn't bother zbout. This was why i t was such a wondenful thing to me when I came to one of my uncles one aftern'oon to find that a cousin of my mother's had sent fer me. He ran a bakery in 'Canton, Ohio, and dnce his wife was going to have a baby, he thought I could come to stay with them and work in the bakery where his wife had been helping out. I lost no time in getting ready to go. [But when I reached Canton I found out the real reason Cousin Fred had written. The bakery was doing so .badly he couldn't afford a regular clerk a t the usual salary. I was a last resort, for they figured I could live with them and they'd save by not having to pay me a salary. In the mornings I had to do the housework a t home, then I would go to the bakery to wait on customers in the afte~moon. And after the baby came i t grew to be tacitly understood I would have the night shift most of the time, which meant I worked a t the !bakery until eight or nine in the evening. But even though I was working hard, and even though I had as little money as [before, I was happier. I was a t leaet started on my way. And

I still had ideas of a better futzre.

was Roy. I kept saying it -er to For months we held on at the bake- myself. His voice rang in m y ears. ry, stinting and scrimping. It was "Ny name's Roy, Beautiful. Don't during those months I met Roy. I forget it, because you're going* be can remember clearly the first time saying it over a lot from now on!" I saw Aim. I was coming down the The third time b y came in he askstreet carrying flour and sugar and ed for a date. Asked is hardly the practically ordered eggs. I t had reached the point with word for it-he us where instead of being able to buy me to meet him on the corner in front in quantity we had to pay cash a t of the bakery that evening a t nine. the grooery store for five-pound That afternoon I pretended to fight sacks of flour and sugar. with myself a long time, but I knew When I reached the door af the I would meet him. My cousin aad his bakery, I shifted my packages to wife never heard me come in a t home, one ann. But suddenly the door anyway, since their room was a t We opened before me. A man was stand- back of the apartment and I slept in ing )beside me, smiling down at me. I a small room off the front hall. I stared up wNit21 fascination into a h e w I could do it. And dates had pair of the bluest eyes I had ever been too few in my life. I had always seen. It was not until long later had to work too hard. I realized the true description of them I was waiting on the corner that was ice blue. night a t ten minutes to nine. "Well," drawled the man, grinning, I t was not long before all my even"are we going to stand out here all ings were spent with Fay. I spent day?" my days wondering about him. I "Thank you," I stamanered in con- knew so little of him. When I asked fusion. him about his work he said vaguely, I stepped into the bakery. The shop "Contracting." I didn't think mu& was empty. I looked again a t the about it then. I wa's glad he was man. I could feel myself blushing. free to m e by the bakery so much "No girl with a face like yours during the day. I even resented it s'ould ever have t o carry all these when customers came in and took up packages," he laughed. my time while I muld be tdking to He reached out and took my Roy. bundles. My arms tingled a t his Then one morning a t breakfast touch. He put the things on the Cousin Fred told me the worst. He counter and then turned back to me. had decided there was nothing t o do "I just want to get change for this but close the bake*. And, of course, bill," he said. Silently, I got it f o ~ I would have to go back home, since him from the cash register, and he thev could no longer keep me with amiled and said, "This was my lucky t h e m five, I think. 1'11 be back. I was suddenly panic-strioken. My All that afternoon after he'd gone one fear was leaving Roy. In despair I was in a haze, Twice Cousin Fred I stood behind the counter a t the bakcalled me down for not waiting cm erv all dav waiting for Roy to come customers quickly enough. Once he b< He ;sually passed m time said I tried to short-change a c m - during the morning and sametimes in tomer. I don't really know what hap- the afternoon. But this time I didn't pened. get to see him until late in the evenI t was the se2cmd time the man ing. I didn't notice thzt he seemed came by that he told me his name grave and upset. I was too worried

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with Roy . to have a n easy job and new clothes. When Roy took me home late that night, it was with the plan that he would not see me until the next evening, Saturday, when I was to be all packed to go. I was to put a few things into a small bag and hide them in the bakery. I could leave from * * * there wheri I locked up for the night. I HAD never met any of Roy's The next day passed at a snail's friends, and I was a little em- pace. A thousand times I glanced barrassed. a t the old clock on the bakery shelf. "Ben, this is Martha," said Rg. t o It was only a.few minutes before it one of the two men who were waiting was time for me to leave that I suffor him in a dingy rooming house. fered any qualms as to whether I The man called Ben looked up from should tell Cousin F'red and his wife. his game of solitaire. He was f a t I knew that if I had told them of it and greasy. His eyes slid slowly and that morning they would haye objectmeaningfully along my figure. I ed and tried to stop me. But I knew, wished instinctively I had worn more too, that they would be genuinely worthan the light revealing dress I had ried a t my disappearance. 'So I wrote on. After ogling me for what seem- a short note to them and placed i t beed ages, Ben turned to Roy with a side the cash register, where I knew wink. F'red would see it when he came in for "iSome looker, Fy," he said. the half day Sunday. I said in the "Younger than Jack~e,but maybe we note that since things were going so can use her anyhow." Then he turn- badly with them I would go on home ed to me, winked again and put a now and avoid the usual good-bye heavy paw on my arm. '%aybe we'll scene. get along all right, kid," he said. "We Then I waited for Roy. It was algot a soft job waiting for a girl like most nine o'clock, and I had been you." ready to close up for an hour or Tom, the other man in the room, more. I was impatient when any cusremained silent. ZIis gaze was fast- tomel's even stopped to look in the ened on me, and his look .seemed to windows. Nine o'clock passed, then me to be bhin and dharp as a knife nine-fifteen. I was on pins and blade. B was uncomfortable with needles. these two men, yet I didn't want to A shadow fell across the door. I leave. I couldn't leave Roy, now, and started up impatiently t o wait on h i d e s the promise of a soft job was whoever ik was. But it wm Roy! Simusic to my ears. I had to have lently I threw myself into his arms, work, and after what I'd been doing trembling with relief and joy. I hastan easy job sounded more than won- ened to the closet and pulled my bag derful to me. from it. Roy stood a t the cash regRoy began to do the talking, since ister, reading my note to Cousin Fred. he noticed my hesitation. They had A s I turned back to him, he looked a place for me, he said, and they felt at me. "You got any cash, baby?" he sure I was just the girl to fill the asked. bill. It was a n easy job, and bhere "Ca~h?" I echoed, nonplussed. "I've would be a lot of money in i t for me. about two dollars in my purse." Besides, they m l d buy me new "Better take what you can from clothes to start out with. They want- this, then," Roy said, tapping the ed me to go to Youngstown with them, cash register. since they had to travel in their h s i I stared a t him in amazement. "But, mss. b y , " I protested slowly, "that's not "I guess we do have to travel," my money. That's Cousin Fred's, Tom said with a peculiar smile. and when he comes in tomorrow for "After what that Jmkie done here, the Sundav half dav he'll*count it first we can't do any good in this town, thing." If I ever get my hands m that double&P'S lips curled a s he looked a t me. crossin' little--" I shrank-back and for an instant I Quickly Roy interrupted. Our plans wished I could back out of the whole here in Canton were upset by some- thing. Then Roy laughed a t me. thing that happened today? he said "Why, look, kid, I'm not trying to to me. "But you can fill the bill okay. make you do anything wrong. You We'll all get out of this burg and go ought t o kntow that. But I've watched to Youngstown." you work here long hours doing hard He turned to the others, and while work that you don't get paid anything I sat there they talked in low tones. for. I just want to see that once in There were insinuations and half your life you get what's coming to pauses in their conversation which I you." m l d n ' t understand. But my mind "But, Roy-" was whirling with its own th~u~ghts. "Icome on, baby))) he said. "You Not to have to go home, but to go need me mound all the time, I ,guess, about my own problems. I n a rush of words I told' him a11 about everything. Roy's mood cleared instantly, and he reacted magnificently, I thought. Before I knew what i t was all about he whisked me into his car, waiting around the corner;, and took me to see two friends of his.

to see that yau get what's coming to you." He took my arm and put my hand on the cash register. "Go on," he said. "Do it. Don't be scared." Slowly I unlocked the register. We took out of i t the 11 dollars in bills that had been there. "We'll leave the small change for Dhat tightwad!" Roy laughed. "Now just put a line in that note lthat you took enongh for your fare home." Silently I added the words to my note. What Roy had made me do had upset me. I did have i t coming to me, it was true, but I could scarcely believe even then that I had done it. If only I had had the courage to stop then, to back out! If only I had realized that I was getting mixed up with one of ,the vilest groups of spongers! But willfully I put all such thoughts out of my head. This was the chance I'd been asking for. I was going to be with Roy. And I was going to have new clothes, an easy job. Besides, in a way, Roy was right about the money, I tried to reaaon to myself.

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IT WAS late at night when we pulled into Youngstown. For when Roy and I had met Ben and Tom, who were driving in anobher car, they insisted on showing me the things they had bought for me that day-a suitcase, some of the little things I'd always wanted aht never had, even a couple of dresses which seemed to be just about my size. Finally we were on the road. I snuggled close to Roy, the lights of the obher car gliding on ahead of m. We got into Youngstown, and went into an all-night restaurant for coffeek. As we sat in our booth, talking, both Ben and Tom were making me nncomfortable, the way they looked a t me. I was glad it was Roy sitting next ts me. Then Ben began to explain my "job" to me. They had picked eut a place in Youngstown where I was to rent a room. The place was the home of the Grant sisters, two old maids who had saved up a good-sized sum of money but still rented out rooms in their home. I was to tell the sisters I was enrolled in business college. According to Ben, I was just to be his "in" so that I could talk about him a s my "uncle" and later introduce him; then he'd get to work after my glowing reports of h i m He'd sell them an interest in his "Msnufacturers' Institute." Later I learned just what that non-existent organization. was. They were sup~osed to own vending machines placed all over the state, and Ben's sales talk was about the enormous profits accruing each day, enough so that any investor could winter in Florida and summer in ;Msine.

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She was instinctively afraid of 11 his friends her conscience 11 bothered her but this did not deter a sordid life of criminal conspiracy until-

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"I can just see that Paisley dame to sleep to forget the things I'd heard waitin' in Buffalo now for her coming them say. wlnter in Floricia," Roy chuckled. The next afternoon I went around to the h m e of the Grant sistew. "She's going to have some wait!" "It's a good thing we work only on Luckily a t the moment they had no old ladies," Tom commented. "Other- other roomers, so they welcomed me wise they'd have been on our trail with open arms. I liked them, too, the long ago, the way you guys spill your moment I saw them. They were plain and simple, the kind of 'persons I'd mouth all the time!" Both Roy and Ben looked a little always wished my own relatives were. And it was easy to talk to the sisters, sheepish. Ben turned to me. especially t o Miss Emily. "That 'winter in Florida' line is In fact, I found i t difficult not to just a sales talk I pull on all the old tell them too much. That first day girls," Ben explained to me. "It's I had to watch myself continually to just one of the things I tell them." keep from making any slips. I told "Listen to what he's tellin' ya, kid," Miss Emily a great deal,.though. All Tom said to me sharply. "It's the about how my uncle was putting me kind of line you'll have to be gettin' through businem college, how he aloff to them sisters soon." ways helped everyone in our family. "Sure, that's it, Martha," Roy said Uncle Ben was making money hand to me. 'See, you get on the good side over fist, I said. For all that morning of these old ladies. You tell them Ben had talked to me again about what big money your 'Uncle Ben' here the line 1 must get off to the Grant makes from his company bhat owps sisters and how it must scem casual. all these machines. And then you inIt was only long after ;that I realtroduce Ben to the dames. He'll do ized the horror of our s ~ t t i n gthere ~ the rest." that quiet $Sundaymorning and cooly "Just leave that part of i t t o me, discussing plans to rob helpless ladies kid," Ben leered. of their life savings. At the time I "Then we'll hit another town, just stilled my conscience by saying I was a s soon as we've done the job hers," only doing *at I had to do, that I said Roy. "You're in the big time could not back out then! Blindly I now, baby. Swell clothes, anything forced myself to go on with it. you want, and almost no work for you The days went by. I left th? house to do." mornings to "go to school." What I "Smart peaple can live by their really did was to meet I b y downtown brains," Ben went on. somewhere and we'd go to the movies They talked about my beauty and or for drives. But every day we my "quality" and how well fitted I would eat supper a t the diner where was for the job. Ben and Tom hung out inost of the "Even better than Jackie," Tom time. Then, a s we sat in ~aurbooth, agreed. "She don't look so wised up I'd have to tell Ben just what progas that witch did." ress I was making with the sisiers. My head was whirling as I listened Several times I talked to the sisters to them. I wished I were back in Canthe Manufacturers' Institute, ton. I wished I were back in my own about something within me kept me little sleepy home town. But down but underneath I knew I wanted to go from saying as much as Ben would demand I say. Every night he kept on with this. I wanted my chance a t .asking me just how much I had acsome of the things I'd always yearned I'd keep trying to turn for, and I had to be near Roy. After icomplished. t off by saying i t was my first job all, I could keep my hands clean. It was early that morning when we and I needed more time a t it. And Roy backed me up. "Sure the went to a hotel, and I went to my roc)m immediately to retire. I was kid needs more time at it, Ben," ha stil1 confused, and my thoughts were said. "She ain't used to it,, the way all disordered. If only I had been Jackie was. Let her learn. "Yeah!" Tom sneered. "Let her h01nest enough to admit to myself an t k t their work was just a vile spend a couple of months learnin' and leme to swindle helpless old ladies! still we may not grab more than four it resolutely I went to bed and tried or five thausand outta these Grant

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dames !" Each time I after that his coming back to five thousand ." dames.

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talked to the Grants mocking words kept "grab four or me outta these Grant

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THEN it, happened. I had met Roy downtown that Wednesday after: noon and we had gone to a movie. We came out that evening about six-thirty and were starting down the street to the car. I was talking to Roy about the movie when I almost bumped into a girl on the sidewalk. I looked up to say something, then noticed the girl standing stock-still in front of me, staring a t Roy in terror. ".Jackie!" Roy muttered. The pretty red-haired girl gasped, Abruptly Roy but said nothing. grasped her am9roughly, in a vicelike group. "Don't say a word!" he commanded. "Keep you trap shut!" Stepping alongside the girl, he turned her around and forced her along with us toward the car. There were others on the street then, of course, although no one was near us. but I don't believe anyone there n* ticed anything unusual about our actions. As Roy shoved Jackie into the car he looked quickly up and down the street. No one was watching us. Quickly Roy drove by the diner where Ben and Tom were uusally to be be found a t this time of day. He honked for them to come out. Tom stuck his head out the door. When he saw the girl sitting between us in the front seat, he turned back. I n a few seconds Ben and Tom had c o w out of the diner and were in their car, motioning us to follow in m s . We were silent a s we sped a l o ~ g after them. Roy was intent on following the car racing ahead, and Jackie sat next to him in terrified silence. We drove out to a deserted section of Mill Creek Park. It was just dusk, beautiful and serene, a s we entered the park. Suddenly Jackie's stiff silence broke and she burst into tears. Hysterical sobs welled from her throat. "What are you going to do with me?" she shrieked, grabbing Roy's arm in a sudden clawing motion. We swerved wildly to the edge of the road, heading for a rock-strem ditch. I reached over and fotcibly pulled Jackie off RoY a s he jabkd her sharply. Sobbing, she fell back onto the seat between us again. "Sit still," 1 commanded her, alt h o u ~ hI didn't know yet what w m going to happen. Jackie turned to me. She laughed hvstericallv. "So now they're using "you? ~ h &can always someone to string along with them in 1;heir damn no-good schemes! But wai t 'til you get sick of it all and try to get --

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SALESGIRL FOR CRIME away! Just wait! And then you'll remember what happened to me! You'll get She screamed as Roy struck her full across the mouth. He stopped the car beside the road. Roy got out, and I did, too. The other car stopped near us and Ben leaped from it. He dragged Jackie out of the car. She fell back against the door. Tom started the radio in his car going full blast. Again and again, then, Ben struck the luckless Jackie. His blows rained across her face, her shoulders and her chest. She shrunk away from him, whimpering, but with oaths he reached out and continued to beat her. Jackie sank down to the running board and then to the ground. She lay there moaning. Her light summer clothes hung in tatters. Ben stopped and turned around. He was breathing hard. He straightened his tie and without a backward glance a t the half unconscious girl lying on the ground he walked over to our car. I drew away a s he stepped by me. Rut he paid no attention tn me. He sat down in the front seat d the car. In a moment he spokk. "You know what to do with her." he said to Tom, who had been standing there with a cruel smile on hls face enjoying the spectacle. Then Ben motioned us to wt in the car with him. Roy climbed in behind the wheel, and slowly I opened the door to the back seat. I heard the other car start off. But Ben p t his arm out and closed the door before I could get in. "Come on u p here in front and sit next t o me, baby," hr. said. "I like your company." Trembling, I got in beside h i m That ride back to the Grant home was an unending nightmare. Now I did know. I knew that I could fool myself no longer about what I was doing or just what kind of men I was mixed up with. I looked a t Roy covertly and saw that he was smiling to himself. For the first time I realized how icy cold his eyes really were. All my passion, all my longing for he him was gone. I saw G m now really was. I realized what a fool I'd been. As I sat here, silent, hearing only snatches of the conversation of the two men, I realized what a stupid child I had been. Starved for affection,.thinking only of my own selfish wishes, I had brought this on myself! I was sick inside, sick with horror and fear. Begging off with a headache, I said I could not eat any supper. I asked them to drive me to the corner near the Grant home and let me out there. Without any remonstrance, they did so. Ben looked a t me piercingly as I got out of,the car. I heard him call to me a s I hurried down the sidewalk, ~ h It began to run toward the friendly lights of the Grants'.

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PREPARING---for M that night, I determined t e fight. MISS EMILY was sitting waiting in ,the parlor when I came in. "I was beginning to be worried about you, child," she said. "You're so mu& later than you've usually. been." "Yes," I stammered. "I was working late a t school this evening. I didn't notice how late it was." Miss Emily looked a t me over her glasses. "Your face looks quite pale," she said. "Have you had your supper?" "I ate a little," I lied, "on the way here." "You donn'twant to work too hard." She smiled. "Why don't you come in

here and sit with me. We'll listen to the radio." Just then I knew Iwould go mad if I had to sit quiet and listen. "No!" I said rudely and loudly. '"No!" Then I saw t;hat Miss Emily looked hurt. 'What I mean is," I hastened to explain, "I have a little headache, and I think I'll run upstaire to lie down." I was already running up the stairs a s I finished speaking. For a long time I sat on the edge of my bed. suddenly I .rae and began hurriedly to pack my things. My mind was working none too weH, for I was nervous and kept forgetting

SALESGIRL FOR CRIME what I would take. My one thought w w to get away. Then( a s I went toward the window to pull down the blind, I stopped and stood still in stunned terror. A familiar car was parked across the street. Beside it a man loitered, looking up a t my window. Tom! Even under that uncertain glow from the street lamp his eyes seemed to me to be evil incarnate. I pulled down the blind with a snap and fe!l shuddering onto my bed. Evidently he had already "disposed of" poor Jackie. The next hours were dreadful. I knew that dawn had cume, but I dared not raise the shade on my front window. Every time I glanced from behind the drawn shade the car was there. Much later, 1heard the ,Grant sisters g e ~ t i n gup and going about their morning tasks. I stayed in my room, tell~ngthem I was too sick to go to school. The Grants must have come up to my room a dozen times that morning. They brought me tea, they brought me hot milk, they brought--me m l k mixed with honey, they brought me some sort of special "drops." I began to feel I couldn't stand taking another thing. Finally in desperation I told them I was going out, to town. It was afternoon. I slipped out the back door and across a yard onto the nest street. Hastily I glanced about. I thought about going back, then I decided my only cllance was to pretend to be playing their game. I climbed into the car next to Pay, tryixg to smile a t him. "Kid, I thought you weren't going to show up today," Roy said suspiciously. "Why'd you come out this way ?" "They wanted me to empty the garbage," I said weakly. "And this morning one of them was sickly, so I stayed in to see to her." I watched them i n the car mirror and saw them indicating me and talking. What were they going to do with me? Ben and Tom got out of their car. In relief I saw them start into the diner. Roy came back to me and we joined Ben and Tom in the diner. Evidently they believed my story. I hoped they did. "Don't l'et what you saw yesterday worry you," were the first words Ben said to me as we sat down in a booth. "Play the game with us and we'll see you're well taken care of." "And if ya don't play i t our way,'' interjected Tom. "we'll see you're well taken care of, then, too." There were snickers from the other two. I tried to smile. "I think she had i t conling to her," I said. "That's a smart girl." Ben nodded pproval and looked a t Tom. "She :arns quick."

He turned back to me and got down to business. "What about the Grant dames? We been here a b u t long enough now. You ought to have that build-up pretty well started. Don't forget I got a list including Akron and Wheeling and ~Columbus. We gotta move on so we can get some real dough together." !'I think they're almost ready." I said, nauseated inside a s I talked. Hurriedly I talked on and on, telling Ben how much I had said to the Grants, how eager they were to know more about it. I t was all lies, but I think he and Roy believed me. Only Tom sat silent, watching me coldly. "I wouldn't be surprised if they drew their money out of the bank any time now," I ended up. "They're getting so anxious." "We're not going to worry about iron bars, now," said Ben. "The kid, here, ain't afrald." Then we left. If the hours of the night before had been torture, that night was worse. Still the car was parked across the street, still Tom was there. I was desperately afraid to tell the Grant sisters, as I had considered doing. How despicable they would think me! And prison would face me, too. All this, I knew, had come about through my own wilzul folly.

SATURDAY dawned clear and beautiful. I went downstairs early, looking so haggard t h a t Miss Emily commented on it. I felt listless, a s if my life were zlready ended. When Miss Ernily mentioned. going to the bank downtown, I jumped a t the prospect of going with her. I t was my one chance to get out of the house without being picked up by the gang. I bought a ticket for *Cleveland. Luckily Roy had given me back the money I had taken from Cousin Fred's cash register the day I moved in with the Grants. I had enough for a ticket to Cleveland, with a b u t six dollars left over. Besides, I saw a bus for Cleveland waiting in the station. I got in the bus and impatiently waited for it to leave. I was sitting there when the two cars came tearing up. Ben had Roy in one car and Tom was in the other. They passed the bus station and the bank, then turned around. I pulled my hand down farther over my face. Just then Miss Emily c a n e out of the bank and stood there on the sidewalk, alone. I prayed for the bus to leave, and bent oyer a s if tying my shoe. The bus pulled out. The men had not yet located me, but they must have guessed, for the next moment the cars were following the bus. They passed us twice, looking closely to be sure I was on it. I didn't dare look up, but since the bus wasn't a t all crowded I knew they would recognize me.

Again their car slowed down and we sped past them in the bus. As I turned around to see what had happened to them, they spurted up again. We were going up hill now, and they soon overhauled us. They gazed straight a t me, for foolishly I had taken a seat on the left side of the bus. They kept alongside, not taking their eyes off me. I t was this concentration on me which prevented them from seeing the car racing down the hill ,toward them. Too late, Roy glanced up and made a frantic dive to turn the steering wheel in Ben's grasp. There was a terrific roar, a smash of steel against steel. The two cars careend crazily down the hill and lurched over an embankment. I was standing, louking 'back, when we went over the crest of the hill and continued on our way. "Will you please sit down, lady?" the driver asked me irritably. In Cleveland, the first thing I did was to get a room a t $2.50 a week. And luckily, I got a job that first afterhoon addressing envelopes by hand. Late Saturday evening I worked, writing a s fast as I could, for we were paid by the piece. I read in the paper that night that one man had been killed and another injured in the wreck. That still left Tom on the loose, I knew. I was d e s perate, remembering that beating of Jackie's, remembering his threats to me. He must not locate me! The other girls with whom I worked considered me very crabby and unsocial. For instead of going to the drugstore for lunch I always worked strai&t through, nibbling at a eandy bar. Fear drove me on, made me starve myself. In a few weeks I haci money for a bus ticket East. I couldn't go home. I cauldn't go back to Canton, but I must put miles between me and Tom Not many months later I was a real business college student, going to school nights and worklng days as a theatre cashier. After six months of hard work a t school I managed to get a jab as a stenographer. I had long before sent back to my Cousin Fred double the money Roy had forced me to take from the cash register. But I asked them not to try to write to me, not to try to get in touch with me. I still felt unsafe. I t was not until a few weeks ago that I read of a roundup of a gang, and of the death of a certain man, "alias Tom Lawson," that I felt safe once more. I can breathe easily once more. I can go about my work nteadily and surely, doing my job to the best of my ability. For one of the most important things I have learned from all this is that a good job requires hard work. A soft job and easy money don't just drop into your lap. You pay for them. There's no other way.

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MY HONEYMOON IN THE GALLOWS

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rest!" When Johnnie had finished, Mother Travis said softly: "Come, Johnnie, let's go home now." I shall newer forget that look in her eyes-like a wounded animal who knows that life afterwards will be a living death of hurt and torture. We went home. Mother Travis picked up the telephone and called Police Headquarters. "This is Mrs. Travis. MP son is here now."

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OVER the wire came a muffled shout: "Keep !him there, Mrs. Travis!"' "There's no question of keeping him here," replied Mother, in trembling tones. "He's here, and he's not running away from anyone." Only a few minutes later there was the scream of brakes in front of the house. Then the tramp of feet on the porch. A loud, preempotry knock. Johnnie got up stood trembling like a leaf. Mother opened the door. There were five o r six men. I recognized only Detectives Hagley and Farris. "All right, Travis, let's go; a man with slick Mack hair said. I ran to Johnnie, threwmyself into his arms. "Don't let me down, Sunny." he whispered. "Never-never!" I cried. "I'll fight for you, Johnnie-fight like no other woman has ever fought!" The next day came the tragic news that Doctor Seder had died in the hospital a s the result of Booth's beating and exposure. All efforts to save him had been in vain. Arnett Booth, O ~ i l l eAdkins and Johnnie were to be tried on charges of first-degree murder. "I'll hang every one of them!" said Prosecutor Ernest Winters to the newspapers. Murder! Hanging! The words struck further unholy terror to my heart. You who live quiet, peaceful lives can hardly conceive of the limitless terror in those words--especially d e n the man you love stands on the brink of the boiling cauldron that seethes over those two words. In the flaming days that passed, I fought for Johnnie with all my I tried to raise heart and soul. money from all mg relatives, to get the best lawyers available. I sought to find witnesses, to prove that Johnnie wasn't as black a s Mr. Winters painted him. I conferred every day with my reporter friend, 'Joe Klaman, of the Huntington Advertiser, whose solace and advice I shall always r e m e t m k . Days of work, worry, scorn, contempt, revdsion, rebuffs-days that had been resemed for our honeymoon of h a p piness (became a honeymoon of horror ! On December 5, Arnett Booth. the

The BOOK OF TORTURE

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Edifed by ARNOLD E. HIRSCH, M.D., F%.D. A Historical Encyclopaedia on the Science of Abnormal Brutality, Revealing All the Savage, Oriental, Ancient and il1odel-n Methods of Sadistic Rites i n the Lust of Torture. This is a unique and unusual book on diabolical savagery and flagellant executional worship, and it is of special interest to members of the profession, police ofEcials, and cultured students of anthropology. IT IS THE ONLY BOOK O F ITS KIND PUBLISHED! NOTHING ELSE LIKE IT! Contains ncarly 100 Rare, Amazing, Esoteric Illustrations. Sold to adults only, and age must be specified when orde~-ingotherwise i t cannot be shipped. '

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bald-hleaded, ringleader and plotter of the kidnaping, went on trial in Cabell County Courthouse, in Huntington. The lfollowing Saturday the jury brought in a verdict of ,guilty of murder i n the, first degree. Booth must die on the gallows! Two days later Johnnie and 'omille Adams went on trial. Johnnie's atconfidence that betorneys cause of mitigating c.rcumstances he ,be the death penalty. But little did we realize the full Winters' power and Time after time Mr. thundered that Johnnie and Omille mercy* that they have saved Dr. Seder's life*that had they repented they have d a h d and caroused at the "KozS' Rest." ' On Friday I watched the jurv file out, my heart in my throat Fortyfive !minutes later they returned. There was a death silence in the high-vaulted courtroom, packed with wople. Then came the verdict: Guilty a s charged! Death on the scaffold! Through scalding tears I saw Johnnie, his attorneys, the entire audience, stare a t the jury in entire disbelief. Then Johnnie fell to his chair, racking sobs shaking his ; M y . I ran to him, tried to stifle my own tears in order to comfort and console him. A few minutes later the blood-congealing words had been pronounced -"hanged by the neck until you are dead!"-, and they wem leadins Johnnie away. I suddenly felt a s if the chill hand of Death itself was clutching at my shoulders, holding me from fleeing from a worse torment to come.

extent of

Toronto 1, Canada Once more I fought to stifle my fear and d d , to fight for Johnnie's life with every weapon I could muster. Many persons tried to persuade me to renounce him, that I could go my way and soon h free of any stifgma. They could not realize the extent of a woman's love. I fought, I I pray&--ra~ed for my Johnnie. I, who thought I had !oved the big-city hot spots and meet~ n gnew, interesting people, spent most of the time in the companionship of my parents. But all our fighting proved useless. every al~peal was denied. Slowly we watched every opportunity, every hope vanish Closer and closer came the day of doom, the day of Death On March 21 my husband, the man I llov&, d i d on the g.allows in Moundsvilte, several miles from Huntington. Sometimes, when the pain i n my heart eases a little, I like to think that the prayer Doctor 'Seder said for Johnnie will help just a bit. I know in v y heart that he had no conception of the terrible thing he was doina. I shall never ;believe other than Johnnie thought he was enkring upon a lark, the pleasure and profit of which were heightened to him with the fumes of alcohol. This + b v that I loved and who loved me c0111d not know that i t was to ;be a lark with Death!-Death, who does not know how to play! I know that the blood of Doctor M e r is on his hands, a s i t is on Arnett Booth's and Orville Adkins'. Yet somehow I like to feel that in the Beyond he and the kindly minister have met again, that a bestowal of forgiveness has been made by the man - who died so terribly, and so needlessly.

. ..

OF H A T E

. ..

AN VELGO hated women and he took his revenge by making love to them, torturing in his own way, cruelly, sadistically, with lecherous cackles at the squirming nude victims whom he forced to parade before him and do his biding. A judge, an honored man, a great citizen in public. A warp& fiend, a monster who took revenge for b o y h o o d slights, who lusted like a beast . in private. Yet for half his fifty-four years he was able to be two men at once, to laugh at the Justice he was supposed to uphold, to mock the Czeckoslovakian ideals he was supposed to present.

J

.. .

..

. .

Jan Velgo, the bad Czech . the disgrace of his country, had grown to be fifteen years old in the normal manner. The son of a poor, but honorable family and the eightih child. his life had been none too brilliant, but i t had been gay and contented. He was rather handsome as a lad and quick witbd and popular. At fifteen, when he was on the verge of putbing adolescence behind him and stepping across the boundary into young marhood, where his charms mi&t lay a foundation for future success, he beoame ill. Out of his i l l ~ l ~ came ss a grotesque curvatme of the spine and a distortion of his face This appaling calamity befalling a youth of so much prmise, embittered him. Where once the girls had fawned upon. him, i h women avoided him, shunned him, distressed by the ugliness of his twisted body and his drawn, lop-sided face. No longer was he popular, except among those men 10 had been 'his intimates as a

ild.

He began to f i r s t for Even*. He knew that any power he mizht thereafter enjoy lay strictly in money. Money and power. If he couljd amass wealth, he could command power. So he buried his bititerness within his wa.rped being and set his face for his goal. Knowledge he must gain first, then by this, power and wealth.

He was a brilliant student. Having no outside interests whatsoever, he was able to concentrate on his studies. He finished his preparatory education in his native city of Brno, Czechoslovakia, in two years, half the time allotted to the d i n a r y student wit21 the ordinary ambitions Such was bhe quality of his determination.

*

*

*

BEiFORE he was half way through his m n t i e s , he had acquired considerable property. He also had gained a LW degree and he had learned the gaudy artifices of politics. Before he was thirty he was a magistate in and mdem bgah to look beyond the warped exterior of his body and to hurl their fair hughters a t his misshapen head. Now, with these daughters being offered him in marriage, he ,became more and more cynical. They had not been offered him a t the usual tim2 of marriage for the young men of his country. They had not been offered him then because he was ugly and malformed and bitber and, most important of all, he reasoned, he didn't have money and he didn't have pros-

1)

1

Now, he told friends, many girls wanted to marry him Why? because he could give Wem position, future, security. He knew, he said, that none loved him for himself. He knew that, for all their beauty and good heeding, they were playing a game and he was the ugly pawn. He knew that they were hiding within th~eir own beautiful selves their repulsion for him that they, or their families, might gain in worldly things.

So he went on into his thirt.ies, hating and saving. He climbed ehe political ladder rapidly and his fortune gmw and grew. He lived comfortably, from exterior appearances, but actually he nursed his gains like a miser. He ate sparingly, paid his m servant meamrlv. - - , was careful with his clothing, made only s ~ t c h public appearances as were either free or of great direct benefit to him golitically or financially. his wealth and power grew, SO dild his fascination for the opposite

DENNIS SPRAGUE

Europe's notorious case of the Jekyll~HydeJudge

AMOURS OF HATE The ginl went, but r&e did return. She returned often. Then, one night when she could no longer bear her shame which was becoming evident on her slim figure, she went to a river at &e edge of their town and hurled herself in.. Her body, swollen from the effects of the immersion and b r condition, was found h o days later and the story was out. But J a ~ lVelgo was powerful. He quashed criminal action with a word. Then he circulated the story that he had discovered the girl was mfaithful. She had a young lover. He had sent the young lover out of the town because he feared, M e n the truth became known, that $is life would be endangered. "I am an old man, crippled and helpless," the whined, or bellowed, &epending upon the circumstanws. "How could I seduce one so young and so lovely?" He was not so old, however. He was in fact, just thirty-seven although bemuse of his affliction and the bitterness in his face and the l m g hours of tail and misery he had gone through Q attain power and mcmey he looked year8 older.

* *- *

sex. He sat in his home and smirked

ta himself, or cackled aloud a t the imnipotence of money and position. Women all but threw themselves a t his feet and when the time cotme that he was aware of this, he decided that the iron was hot. He could strike, now. He would exact his revenge on all womankind. He would humiliate and debauch them and then he would laugh a t their misery as they had laughed a t his. His first overt act to come to public notice was the seduction of a sixteenyear-old girl. She was the beautiFul daughter of an excellent but impoverished family and he had pretended to be interested in her as a future wife. He called on hkr formally and then was seen with her in

publi'c places. He had b e c m a judge now wibh a seat in the town's inner councils and he wielded tremendouq judicial influence. After a courtship of two months, the young girl suddenly found herself enceinte. She dared not tell her parents, she was afraid to see the family physician. She went, instead, to tihe agency of her embarrassment and told him they would have to be married a t once. He laughed in great glee. He was amused. He was, truthfully, downright tickled. "You who are so young aad beautiful want me, old and bent and ugly, to 'believe that you gave yourself only to me," he scoffed a t her. "Ho, ho, ho-and now get out and never come back"

THE incident af the s i m year old suicide did not detract from the man's political ,pawer. A s a matter of fact, he lost nothing whatsoever, but actually gained. Within a few m o n t h he became a district judge in T d e n , Cm&as1ovakia, a mu& bigger and more powerful position. This was in 1920, shortly after khe reorganization of the Caeeh republic and, opportunislt that he was, he was climbing with great rapidity in the nation's important judiciary. In Tesahen he carried on his campaign against all womankind. Instead of being warned by the deaf3 of the girl, he seems to have been encou~aged. Becauw he was not able to conbct prospects rapidly enough any other way, he inserted an advertisement in the local newspapers. In it he offered to advance, without interest or obher commitments, smal! loans to what the advertisement describing as "deserving girls." He was not reluctant to identify his judicial name with this enterprise. As a matter of fact, it was such identification that drew suspicion away from it. Such an offer, without some

D

AMOURS OF HATE good name behind it, unquestionably

would have flushed up a n instant and highly indignant suspicion. But with the impeccable Judge Velgo's name behind it, i t was ackpted as the dharitable gesture of a great and good man whose heart bled for the misfortunes af underprivileged girls. And indeed thnC!.was a place in his heart for them. I t was not, however, a place where the milk of human kindness flowed as fulsomely as his duped fellow citizens suspected. Such milk as there was, was well tainted with the wormwood of bitterness and hatred and abnormal revenge. Since Czechoslovakia was a country just rising from the ashes of the 1or.g anld destructive last war, (and now a ' country without a name), poor and overcrowded with love starved women and short on men because of war's toll, the good judge's offer of finencial assistance to those in distress met ~ 3 % a n imtaneous response. Girls of all ages flocked to his chambers and pleaded to be helped over certain embarrasing mileposts, most of theni not entirely unrelated to impending motherhood. Judge Velgo, with that directness of purpose that lifted him to the political peaks and prompted him to seek out his fair victims by the unwavering line of newspaper advertising, a t once began to separate the sheep from the goats and the black sheep from the white. If one of MS clients already was enceinte, he furnished her with the price of .an operation. He dso supplied her with the operator. After the operation, and due time for recovery, she was to return to him. She would then be required to yield to his desires, which were many, and also to repay his money. The judge covered that in &er ways. Those who were not expectant mothers, were endowed with small loans to carry them over current trmblea, all of whidh was to be returned, the principal in currency, the interest after the established fashion.

* * * [S honor had managed to work r considerable trade in Teschen I he was unexpwtedly b l e d upthe political fates once more. time he was promoted to super-

ior circuit judge in charge of divorce matters and returned to Brno. Not only was Brno a larger city than Teschen and his home town, but i t also was the seat of a provincial government aad hie seat m the circuit court was a noble distinction, indeed. Since tbe divorce d o n of the ciruuit court also included those torts concerned with all manner of domestic and morals problems, Judge Velgo was in .a position to indulge his appetites. If m y of his victims felt impelled to take any morals action against him, they wod'd be obliged, by the nature of the judicial structure, to take i t before him. If there remained any lingering doubts a s to What the judge's verdict in any case against himself might have been, let them be suppressed a t on*. In h he audQciously reestablish-

ed his brokerage in young flesh. He inserted the usual a d v e r t i s e m t and opened his chambers for the =me sort of business as had proved so rich in Teschen. Whether or not news travels slowly in Cmchoslovakia or it. women care less allergic to the sort of abuse they get from the J a n Velgw of this world is problematical. Whatever i t was, there was no lessening of the ardor with which the ivomen of Brno fell in with h k planned debauchery. In Brno Judge Velgo's singular mania reached its ludhest flowering. Not only did he collect the usual inter& rates, but he took to making visual records of his vengeful con.quests. He required his viatims not only to satiate his sex appetites, ut also to pose for his amateur photography. in the nude. In f a d , he re quired them 60 pose first in full

AMOURS OF HATE attire and in the hude, a form of depraved tittilation that later received considerable publicity.

b o a But he wasn't half as sur- &em as one admirer of art to another. prised as he would have been if he He made no effontrr to press his had known all there was to know faint advamtage. He behaved in the about Marie IEavlick, or as he was manner coumtly. But he could not In addirtion to these photographic recards of his exploits, the judge kept going to be when he found out just m i s t the temptation to impress his guest with the eroticisms of hi6 a diary. It was a most fortrhiright a few of those things. Marie was petite and wise. She private photography collection. and explicit diary. Not even the dumbest jury of Slavic' peasanb could had diwovmd at the tender age of He showed her some of his moat have misunderstood it. He listed the fifteen how to make use of her bodily prized nudes. names, ages, weight, height, contours, charms. Because of her beauty and Marie played her hand perfectly. complexions, etc., in this record and piquancy, she had been able, thr011g11 She quit the apartment in hi& dudin the space neserved f w remarks he a succession of nine more c& less well geon.. She refused even to wait for , acquire her educat- him$ taking a taxicab at his door. made a notation of the peculiar tal- placed - l o ~ sto ents of each of his partners in ion and to secure for herself a pos- She went hame and refused to answer ibion with an important Brno banlr- his letters or his calls for three long amour. Thus Jan Velgo, secure in his om- ing house. So excellent was her job weeks. nipotence a s the circuit court judge at her current age of twenty-one tbat Then she saw him again and to whom the crimes he was so ar- she was in a position to give her again mid yet amin, but always she 1 dently commdtting were made respon- charms even more leeway ~ a 1 ever demanded the utmost respect. Finally, sible, went on and on until, a t the before and to hold out for the best four months later, she visited him price and man, great or small, had to age of fifty-one, which! was in 1934, ak his apartment and found there a he came to a detour on his fleshly offer. girl nanned Heda ReichR1. Helda lrsd The judge didn't h o w these things. been1 one of the judge's brokerage amtrail. * * * If he had, he probably would hlve ours for some time. We was young' taken to heel. Rut he was =CL and quite pretty. The judge, after I T WAS spring and the judge was to vyoung and very inexperienced waking in the park. He had long and very poor girls who needed his seve~al h o u ~ sof gayety, suggested since corrected much of the earlier money more than they needed honor that the two pose for nude phot* graphs He was using W, already spinal affliction. Money and his iron or self respect. As a result his familiar with the experience, as a deteronination had done that for him. experience, for all its m a s s qual'ty, b y . Now hb made a not wholly unaktract- W n ' t beem specially educational. Heda stripped with maidenly reive figure of judicial stxength and M&e graciously made dates wilh tluctrtnce and ultimately Mark, after debonair dignity as he strolled, jauntly swinging his cane, his silk topper Velgo, then failed to keep them. S1 e much skilled blushing and many shy becomingly aslant, his pincenez cord met him by designed accident innum- protestations, likewise stripped. They dangling rakishly fmm his high fore- erable times, praaticed her wiles as- posed for the photos and then Marie siduously at such times,'then broke quickly redmed her attire and behad. other engagemenb. Now she told As he strolled, the judge, much in him never to bother her amin. Now came once mone the elusive minx she always had b e e n - 4 t h the judge. the manner of the tribune of the she liked him enormously, but di2n't Maud Muller piece, suffered his eyes If the judge had been h w l e s d y believe in going out with men, esto dart hither and yan in search of fascinated by the girl prior to the pecially such worldly men, on such photomaplh incident, he was now appetizing feminine flesh. As he pastranced her, again he affronted her. 8ed a bench, he noticed that a rather no thin^ less than supinely mad abcut p ~ t t ygirl with big brown eyes ~ n d her. TO him she L m k at once a combination of Cleopatra, Ninon I'Ena challenging air was occupying one clos, and Lola Montez. He offered FOR three years is kept up. NOW end of it. The judge, never one to her riches, position, everything but and then she lunched with % h Oc. stand on ceremony where women were marriage. involved, sat down and asked her if casionally he t w k her to the theatre, Then the time came when his apshe could lend him a pencil. She pro- a necessity which pained him deeply. duced the pencil and they began to H was not used to suuh exwnses. But petites, never before denied their utstill his love remained a brown eyed, most demands, overcame him and he talk. He discovered that the girl's name provoking, impregnable wil1-o-the- pleaded with her to marry him. Craftwas Marie Havlick and that shr wisp a d he remained a defeated, de- ily Marie led him on until he twice put his plea in writing, mailing the was a janitor's daughter. He also signing, lecherous sucker. Finally, on an August afternoon, letters to her home with the headless disoovered that she worked a s a SWhe was rewarded, a t least in part. abandon of a sorely smitten mind. retary, sometimes, and that she spoke Slavic, German and somt En- The bewitching bezom consented to Immediately Marie became another glish, not to mention a bit of French visit him in his apartment. m a n . This, osten~ibly,hiad been Velgo, Ibo be sure, showed her his hr g d . For all his years (he was end a smattering of Polish. He was greatly surprised to find such learn- etchings. But he showed them with- two years older than her father) hie ing in c.m young and so modestly out the usual trimmings. He showed was wealthy and had positim He

AMOURS OF HATE m, indeed, er big nuin in Czechoslovakian jurisprudence and destined, apparently, to grow btgger. Also, he was old and for iaill his grim determination to live and 'tre strong, his h d t h was not of the be&.

TWO weeks aftr they became engaged, Mairie, with the coy grief of a conquered maiden, yielded her charms to her slavering suitor. It all happened in his apartment amd it happened amid Crapings of Roman splendor. The man 1hta.d outdone himself in the matter of wine and edibles and esoteric trappings. He had the finest of sandle wood to bum in his incense bowls, the house was filled with roses and all manner of aromatic flora and an African howboy in an exotic Eabit noiselessly trod the carpeted corridors m bowed obsequiously to their comw d a If the eabh W less d u r i n g to the judge than the chase, he did not, at mce, @many signs of it. His lovemaking was fully a s avid and as chiro g r a p h i d a s i t had been before and when, one night M;arie announced that her parents were objecting bitterly to her marrying one so much older, he was utkrly distrait. Jcin Velgo was incredulous. He, one uf the powerful judicial figures of the republic of Gzechodovakia, unsuitable for the daughter of a humble janitor? A m m of wealth and pasition and power an undesirable husband for the working daughter of one who amounted, in the still feudal Slavic socilal scale of a middle European nation, to a servant? He was both shacked md furious. His sudden anger quite overwhelmed Marie Havlick. For f i e first time she began to fear she had overplayed her clever litble hand. Sfhe found herself the supplicant. She found herself agreeing to a most ignoble marriage contrmt. It a i d , in effect, that she was to be his wife, Mat she waa 60 bear him, the child with which ,.she .already was pregnant and that she ivas to turn the child over to him after its binth wilihout m y questions m

d e c1.

To add to the mystery of the marriage, the ceremony was performed a t

six o'dmk in the morning, an hour selected by Judge Velgo because of the opportunity for privacy.

the dignity of bhe pLished bell pnll, and as they waited far a response, they gwt a most unexpected one.

It was at this juncture ehat the calculations of both these scheming people began to backfire, although the bride's errors began to be manifest fir&. Velgo, with an income of 4,000 crowns monitMy, gave his bride exactly 200 crowns monthly for her support. This was to provide her with dothing, medical attention required because of h condition, f d , quarters and all the little luxuries to w k i h one of her station was en-

The sound of a mildly muffled pistol shot broke through the door and smote upon the flabbergasted ears. A t once they forced the door. They whu?d into the V d g a music salon and there, with his body still riggling nauseatingly, blood streaming from his temple to the rich, new rug, lay We& Cerny, a pistol a few feet a m y. Even a s the offiwrs rushed to Cerny, there oame m d s of a feminine bleating from an adjacent bathroom. A woman was crying that her dear man had been .attacked, that burglars had entered the place. The officers found the bathroom door Iwked on the outside. They d o c k e d i t and discovered Marie Velgo inside, b a t i n g her breast and appa~entlyin great distress. She rushed out d s t m d at the prone 3nd bloody figure of Cerny. Then she painbed dramatically to a n open window a t the rear of the house and smamed that the marauders had escaped-in that direction.

titled. Obviously this dowry was not ccmsisknt with the bride's original expectations. She was not, in fact, as well stationed, financially, as she had ' been a s a working'girl. Bwt #he was not one to be easily de.feattl She had other irons in the fire and they were m n g hatter by the hour. I n her peregrinations h and about the Vdgo ho&old she had made the acquaintance of a strange, bald, thickset gorilla named Wemzel Cerny. Cerny was the adored of the Velgo laundress and likewise a man of considerable muscular endowments and compa~.cltivelyno brain pan whatsoever. Marrixi ztnd the father of a seventeen-year-old son, Cerny nonebheless persist&! in his amouxa with the slatternly Velm w a s h e m a n and through this attachment he came under the influence of the judge's ~ e t t young y bride. Marie, still pretty and as aroh s wen& as ever set s man's heart to palpi'tating, went to work on Cerny. She told him, and he agreed unreservedly that the judge was a maunte')haink, a miser and a cad because of his stinginess with her. Gerny agreed that he ~ J W Sall of these things and l i h m in a few more of his own invention, just to be sure that the eminent tribune was properly catalogued. Then one night a high government official, liviflg next door to the judge, held an altercation of such mnnifestly vident proportions that he notified the gendarmerie. The police arrived on the double quick and as they confronted the Velgo door, heard a piano playing raucously. They rapped smartly on the door, ignoring

As two officers l w p t nimbly through the window and bayed the alleged spaor of the fleeing brigands, Marie directed the remaining two to another bathroom. "They put him in the-my poor, dear man," she cried. "He's in there." Again there was signs of a bathroom dool- having been secured on the outside and once more the officers twisted the key and entered. In the tub, the head submerged and his hands amd f& bound, lay the twisted (body of Jan Vel,go.

A MEDICAL examiner was called, but he could do nothing for t'he proud jurist. Another physician ordered Cerny to a hospital. There it was found that (hiswound would not prove fatal, but that he undoubtedly would 1the sight of one eye, the pistol bullet having crashed through his skull striking the right optic n k e . With these findings came also the word of the arrest of Cerny and

AMOURS OF HATE M a r k Velgo for the murder of Judge Velgo. The police, wi'th a deplorable lack

ef trust in their fellow man, and especially dheir fellow woman, had refused to be taken in by the burglary shy. A t once Marie changed her stmy. S h put the blame squarely upon Cerny'a gorillaesque shoulders. She did it on the hope $hat Ceniy, a notoriously bad shot, had been worse than usual in attempting to inflict a minor scalp wound on himself and had fatally wounded himself. 'Such was not the case howewr. He lived. Cerny, informed of Marie'e story, prduced a promissory note made out by her. It promised to pay him 5,000 ~rcwpns down for certain unnamed, but broadly 5$ntecI a t services. A$ter the services were performed, it promised yet other monies, totaling another 5,000 krona, after the services "known only to the payee and myself" had been satisfacturily perform!&. The case went m trial. Shortly it wemt to the jury, a jury of honcrable, but impressionable men. Within two hours they returned to the courtroom. n e y had reached a verdi& 'The court asked to hear it. "We find Wenzel Cerny guilty of murder," the foreman said. "And Mmie Velgo?" "We find Marie Velgo not guilty," the foreman intoned, blandly, then %it down, d 1 pleased with h i d f . Later he was called upon for an explanation He said #hiat the jury had concluded h t Madame Velgo waa under irresistable force when she committed the crime, which they admitted @he h d a definite part in, and thus was not guilty under the laws of the country. It was sort of equivalent to a self defense finding in our own counts ?rhe prosemtor was nort only he was terribly, terribly hurt. He amailed himself of a facet of the Czechoslovakian law that migh twell be q i e d here. It provided that in an event of a jury is fixed, or suddenly ,goes emotirmally ga-ppr such as thii one ostensibly had under the influence of Marie's coquetry &e defendant may be placed on trial again and the law's demand^ more adequately &fied. MARIE went on t r h l again. This

kui,

'

time the c& made irt clear that the irresklibte force was not to be considered. There WBS no intimation that she had ;been irresistibly farce3 to do anything. The evidence either said she and Clerny %d put the judge in the bathtub or Cemy alone M dohe it and the 'had bkem no part in the ceremony. The verdid aame back quickly. Marie was guilty. she wrus sentenced to serve twelve years in prison. The court, well pleased, took occasion to deliver a brief rebuke and a bit of sound advice to women of Marie Vdgo's peculiar e n t h u s i m s . The learned judge had admitted the phatogra.phic collection of Velgo into the evidence, also his diary. Upon these exhibits he based his Iscture. "Our fair defendanv5" he caid gallantly, "was both Mndwme and clever. But she was, unfortunately, too cever. Had she come %to f i i s court with these exhibits (indicating

~~ of

photos and diary) and pleaded that &e had slain her husband when he abtenp+ed to add to her shame by forcing her to pose, in her o b v i d y delicate condition, in the nude, then she could readily have proved irrestible force. But she did not. She p h n e d twro well. She first attempted to convince the police and this w u r t that there had been a burglary and hter she elected to throw the guilt on her stupid dupe. "Marie Velgo W= scheming and clever, but rshe was not wise. Perhaps she will learn the wisdom of simplicity ih the 12 years before her in whi& she will have time to reflect and grow gradually old." Marie went to prison for 12 years and b r y was given a similar sentence. And w%en m e was s k n ~ n c e d to 12 years in prison in Czechoslovakia, m e nat only served 12 pars, he served an e v d dozen. They were very pmtimh on that point then. thg

I

by ED, SULLIVAN 1

Her burning eyes stared at t!he wall. Suddenly she stiffened: a dry gasp rattled in her throat. "He's coming after me! Fernand's after me!" she cried. "Don't let him get me! He'll kill me!" The nurses held her d m as she shuddered at a horrid vision they could not see. Thus did Franc- King, the darkhaired butterfly girl who thought she could outsmart life, in a hospital cot in Chicago seven years ago.

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HE girl's eyes were pits of agony. Her face, glistening with sweat, was as white as the pillow on which she - tossed. The doctors shook their %ads. There was no hope for er. The poison she had taken as searing her vitals like a hite flame. All they could do as ease her pain with morhine.

RLO'OD STREAMED down the little dark man's face, dripped from his slashed stomach as he staggered d m the alley, his hands spread out before him like a sleepwalker. He st~m~bled for half a block, hold- and he died at the emergency hospital, ing onto the house-fronts. Finally he refusing to name !his killer. fell in a blwody heap, in the flaring * * * circle of a street-lamp. THE YOUNG CHINESE blinked "I must go on," he muttered through the bubbling blood-froth on his lips. with embarrassment, behind his thick "They mustn't find a m near Fer- spectacles, as the little white girl, hardly more than a child, pulled- the nand's place!" "I'hose were almost the last words scarlet evening gown over her head Louis Nimois, the French-Canadian and stood brazenly before h i m . gambler, ever spoke. Hours later "You seem so young-you don't they found him lying in that San ' m m to belong here," he said. "SureFrancisco alley in a welter of blood, ly you're not working here from

CRUSHING AMERICA'S CRIME LORD

58 \

.

The police were powerless to cope with the political powerful crime magnate, until the Federals choice. And why-" He gestured a t the tell-tale Ilsedfe punctures on her white arm. A shadow passed over her pititrd painted mask of a face. "I can't leave here," she said. Fernand wouldn't let me. He'd kill me. I took up the junk so I can get svme sleep, without nightmares-" Then, a s a footstep sounded in the corridor outside, the m a k was on again. She stretc(hed enticingly, smiled invitingly at the yellow man. This, seven years ago, was little Bunny Anderson, the girl from Portland who was the favorite of San Fran.cisoo's Oriental brothels. A few months ago she was let out of the county jail after serving her latest term for using d w a n old, olld woman a t twenty-three

e

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FERNAND. Fernand le Corss. Through these and a hundred other sordid tragedies of the shadow-world, runs tthst name of fear. The name of Juseph F a m m d Ondella, alias Fernand le Corse-Fernand the Corsican-for years in San Francisco was a syabol of vice, degradation, crime and sudden death. The squat, enormous-jowled, sluglike Corsican ruled an empire of fear, shame, and pain. He fancied h i m d f a worthy counterpart of his countryman, Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a Luciano of the West Coast. His tentacles reached to New York, to Montreal, to the sewers of Paris. America truly proved itself the land of opportunity for this alier.. He amassed a fortune, built on the broken bodies of wme.n and the ruined lives of men. He widded power such as few men wield. In presenklay San Francisco. he held hundreds of men and women in the grip of terror unpwelled since the heyday of the Mafia in Sicily. He was a unique phenomenon, able to exid only in a cosmopolitan and

gxaft-ridden city like San Francisco. Like A1 &pone, -he was immune from interference by the police. Even when iMue s e n s a t i o d Atherton graft investigation ripped the lid partially off Sah Francisco's sordid mess of corruption several years ago, no evidence could be secured against him to warrant s criminal inclicement. Fear sealed the lips of witnesses. But Uncle Sam at last caugnt up \ ~ 5 t hF d the C o r s i h , just as

he dM ~ 5 t hAl C a p o n e n o t for his flagrant crimes but for a minor violation of federal law on which an ironclad case could be built. For months, investigators worked in mcret, and i t is only now that the complete revolting truth about San Francisco's f a t vice lord can be told. F e r n d w w never as notorious as AI ,Capone. In fact, his name wldom golt into the newspapers. Few respectacle citiaem ever heard d him.

LUSHING AMERICA'S CRIME LORD

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But in the devious b ~ y ofs the Barbary Coast and the Tenderloin, of Chinatmm and North Beach, h:s name was a fearsome watchword. His victims were not people whose misfortunes would cause any public oultcry. They were poor prostitutes living under the thumb of grafting police, white-faced pimps eking out, a miserable existence in the trade of ultimate shame, illiterate aliens cowering in fear of deportation. People whom Fernand could kick around with little fear of a comeback. Men and women who are a n integral part of society, but to whom society a1fords little protection. Nevertheless, th'y were human beings, their flesh was human fledh, and the beating they .took from Fernand hurt them jnst ss much as i t would hurt you or me. In the room of one of the investigators who was largely responsible for h smashing of Fernand, hangs a framed quotation from W& Xhitman's poem, "To a Common, Prostitute" : "Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude p u ; "Nat till the waters refuse to glisten and M l e for you, will my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you." ' This has been the keynote in this mfan's work of investigating graft and corruption, and results have proven that his sentimentalism, if i t be such, is iron-fisted. ,So, here is the story of Fernan3 the Corsioan, the sleepy-eyed slug who grew fat and gross on the proceeds of shame and disease:

JOSEPH FERNAND ONDELLA was barn in 1879 in the liktle sea-

part of Ajaccio in Corsica-imically, the self-same town in which Napoleon was born. Atscrape with the authorities in early youth sent him fleeing to Paris, where h lost himeelf in the underworld among thousands of his kind. &dowed with a villanioua imagination and absolutely no txruples, he soon became a full-fledged Apache of the Paris gutters. Among the AWJG m, pimping is an honorable way of . making: a living. The heavy-eyed Corsican youth had no difficulty in attrading the Cocottes of the cafes

to him, and he built up a profitable string of girls. The wanderlust hit him, and perhaps he had a little more vision, in his twisted way, than his cronies of the gutter. About 1901, he came to New York with his favorite girl, a blowzy, big creature, whose name will prdbably remain forever unknown to history. He had libtle trouble finding MS own element in New York. He pilt the @rl in a cheap brothel, and with her earnin'gs opened a cafe cm Ylst Street between Sixbh and Seventh Avenues. n i s place ,became a hangout for the Frendh underworld-for prostitutes, p i m p S, pickpockets strongarm men. The word went o ~ that Fmmand was a "right guy," and it was not long before he was onerating a haven for criminals whc fled from Paris. Murderers, gangsters, big-time robbers paid himrnfancy snms for taking care of them in New York until France cooled off for th.m. He got together a little gang c l his own, to take care of any outsiders who might step on the toes of his friends. A few unsolved murders and disappeammes went down on the

books. Then the law cleahedl him out. The French gan,g&s were getting a little meribold, and Fernand the Fixer w m not yet big enough bo be well

59

entrenched with Tamtmany. In fact, he had overlooked the little detail of greasing tlhe police and the administration. Consequently, when the newspapers clamored for a cleanup, the police sent Fernand and his coterie of Apachw high-tailing out of New York, bag and baggage. Fernand had heard lurid tales of San F r a n c i s c w f its wide-open Barbary Coast, its lax law enforceme~lt, its large foreign colonies. So to Sah Francisco he went, with the f a t bankroll he had accumulated, and opened a little cafe and hotel for French people on Broadway, between Powell and Stockton streets. This was in 1907, wheh the earthtquake-devastated city was in the throes of the great graft prosecution in which fie late William J. Bums bared the entire Board of Supervisors .as 'bribe-takers, dominated by Abe Ruef, a Pttle weasel-faced man who held every racket and graft in the palm of his hand. Ruef and his machine were in the pmcew of being broken, so neither the police nor t!he politicians bothered the young Corsican who was going about things in his o w n quiet way.

He operated the same sort of place for the worst element of the French for the wast element o fthe French underworld, a hideout for cut-throats who came all the way from Paris to

CRUSHING AMERICA'S CRIME LORD

tle circle. No one could complain to the authorities, and the police on the other hand paid little attention to what went on among the foreigners. Thus the FrendhrItalian Syndicate came into being-the close-knit organization,that has been an integral and sinster part of San Francisco's underworld for a quarter of a century. Fernand and a few others were the organizers; their watohwords were silence and fear. With the aid of their strong-arm men, they persuaded the less bold of the vice and gambling operators that the way to prosperity and security lay in sticking together, with Fernand as the "fixer" for them all, and his place the clearing-house

A t first, Fernand's ring was of modest size. To expand his business and to insure a steady flow of white flesh for the lust-driven frequenters of the Coast brothels, Fernand left San Francisco for a few years and did organizing work in other cities. I n Butte, Montana, he found a large French colony; he stayed there for a while an,d made his influence in. San Francisco known He established a regular route for the shipping of girls from the hrothels of Butte to the Barbary Coast. Then he went to Montreal, where he followed his usual procedure and set up a headquarters f y French criminals. His pimps sought out choice morsels from the Montreal

brothels and Fernand sent them to Butte and to San Francisco. They dealt only with French girls-Fernand in his youth was smarter than he turned out to be later, and he had sense enough to keep in his own cirde and not tempt fate. The French girls were less likely to squeal t.a the American a u t h a r i t i a

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FERNAND WAS ROLLING in money a t this time; he oast off Marie and took several young girls into his menage a t the same time, to replace her. He liked them younghis favorite mistresses were always under twenty years old. He splurged at the night-allrbs ahd the race-tracks. He remerted to a

USHING AMERICA'S CRIME LORD quaint litble habit he had learned in Paris, and added to his bankroll by picking pockets at the race-tracks. Instead of stealing money, he stole tickets from men who were known to be smart wagerers, and often cashed in scores of stolen tickets on a winner. Race-track detectives caught up with him, and he was thrown out of several eastern tracks. His white-slave route well-established and running smoothly, he returned to San Francisco about 1913, went back to active operation gf the Syndicate. Then came the Red Light Abatement Act and the end of the Barbary Coast and the segregated district. San Francisco was undergoing a ClVlC ' ' bat!hi Most of the vice operatot's 1-an for cover, thinking their world had come to a n end; but not so W ,,,.and ornc le Corse. Ondella s a y in the righteous upheaval a New DeaJ for his Syndicate. The brothels could no longer operate legally; they we= outside the law now, and in order to run they would have to be protected. They were no longer confined to a few blocks now-the whole city was his hunting-ground. The madamee, prostitutes, and pimps who had operated flagrantly on the Barbary Cosst wodd now be forced into furtive byways, dominated by 'Fear. It was the psychological moment for a man like Fernand to step in as their guardian angel. The broken "system" of the A& Ruef had been succeeded by a new graft ring. Saloon-keepers and bailbond brokers, close to the police, were the go-betweens. There were several saloon men in particular, a s unscrupulous a s Fernand, who encouraged c m k s to frequent their places, then sold them out to the policethen "fixed" the cases, "chilled the beefs"-collecting a f a t fee from both the crooks and the police. Fernand made friends with these men, througlh them arranged for protection of the French-Italian vice houses. The protection money cleared through him, and a goodly part of it clung to his pudgy finger's. -

He made more trips to Montreal. Once he lured two young sisters

from their homes in the Canadian city, brought them t o Butte and trained them to h prostitutes. About 1919, when they were thoroughly broken in and their spirits cowed, he brought them t o San Francisco. He set them up in a little rooming -house a t Broadway and Stockton, catering exclusively to Orientalsto Chinese from teeming Chinatown, Which adjoins the French-Italian colony, to Filipinos and to Japs. More and more, Fernand was realizing the profit that lay in selling white flesh to yellow mlen.

As he once told a friend: "The Chinks a r e better. They don't stay long, they come back oftener, and they don't get drunk and raise a riot like w'hite men." The rooming-house operated in high-gear unttil Fernand had a quarrel with one of the sisters. Shortly after that, the girl disappeared, and her sister, sworn to silence by Fernand wen3 back to Montreal. Fernand was getting a little older now, fatter and grosser, and his taste for young girls seemed to grow in inverse proportion. He was a

CRUSHING AMgRICA'S CRIME LORD

62

veritable satyr; s p W by the absin-

the which h e drank in Gargantuan quantities, he kicked and beak them in sadistic orgies that were the talk of North Beach.

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I N 1922 H E PICKED UP a beautifd little blande in Montreal- a stareyed girl m m e d Odede. He brought her to San Francisco m the pretext that &he w d d be his Number One mistraw. Then, instead of keeping her in his c m luxurious apartment, he put her in the Del Cleo Hotel on Broadway, where the woman keepe r held her a virtual (prisoner and taught her how to please the Filipino trade. The gifl became pregnant in a few weeks, and refused to submit to an abortion. She threatened to go to the federd auKhorities. Fernand, who had had big p h s for her, shipped her back in disgust to her parents in Monitred. In another case, the father of a Montreal girl complained to the immigration aubhorities. F e n a n d heard and beof it through hi~~~grarpevine, fore tiha inspectors could act he gave the girl, a little blonde named Simone, a roll of money and sent her home, under threat of death if she talked. She never talked1 With Prohibition, Fernand opened a new establishment-a little bootlegging -- - -place on Stevenson street near Twelf th-a hole-in-ehe-wall, off a dark d k y . Here, f a r from the Barhry Coast, he transacted most of h i s impantant business. It. was here, about eight years ago, that Louis Nimois, a bigdshot French gambler, got into an a r g w n e d with another Frenchman and was hornibly slashed afid shot three times. Blind with blood, Nimois staggered out into the b e e t , [bent only on getting away f ram Fernand's place-he did not know he was dying, and he was afraid of Fernand's vengeana w e if he should be the cause of the N i c e vissiting the place. The bartender slammed the door M i n d him. Nimois staggered h d f a block, fell in the gutter. Hours later, a truck-driver found him and h o k him t o the emergency hospital, where he died. Meanwhile, Fernand's bartender

and the other patrons had swabbed fie blood from the floor and obliterated the trail of blood outside the door. To all appearances, Nimois had been killed in the street. The case was e t t e n on pddw records as unsolved. The killer, whose name is h m n t o several persons, fled to Chicago and was never troubled .

bail-bond men, who split it with grafting police. In return, Ondella's houses wem rarely troubled. Fernand Ondella was not a Napoleon for nothing. H e could promise protection, and give it. His word was law among the aliens. When a pimp wanted to move his girl from one house to another, h e did so with Fernand's sanction-and paid Fernand. The code cd~ the French-Itdian underworld was absolute silence and loyalty--ithat is, among the lesser operators. The doubBe-crosser, the potential squealer, was swiftly and deftl'y bandled by Fernand's strongarm men.

FERNAND AND T H E SYNDICATE were now running full blast. Most of the police g r a f t payoffs were handled by the office of a bail-bmd broker, a former Barbary Coast s d oon-keeper, in the shadow of +Se Hall of Justiae. But Ferhand himself was above Fernand handed the collections even the code. H e double-crossed his from the French-Italian houses, own people right and left, and got turned p a r t of the money over to the away with it. He exitorted huge

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CRUSHING AMERICA'S CRIME LORD

ly to Wentals. He took in as silent partner a naturalized French-Italian who had e d e a fortune in the sale of white flesh. The Italian would put up the money, Ondella would do the fixing, and the take would be split three ways-between On&lla, the French-Italian, and the "resident manager" of tlhe place. Fernard en,gaged in profitable deals with Manie "Ma" ,Pappens, ope r d o r of a number of h,ouses in North Beach and the Tenderloin. When Mrs. Pqppens was sent to Tel.achapi Prison a few years ago for conkributing to the delinquency of mtimrs, in a particularly disgusting Fernand managed many of case, her affairs for her unitil her triumphant ereburn to the brothel business. Abopt 19130, Fernand met a fascinating girl named Frances King, and made her his Nu,xntber One Girl. He kqxt her for himself, and lived with her in a hotd on Pine Street. girl What the slender, reed-like eveF sans in the grass, sloppy Cur-'--R, will never be known. a t any , she was soon disillusioned and ened by his bestial lust. But her it was broken, and she stayed with him, for fear of what might hapipen if she crossed Km. -L.----

I

He took her on several eastern away, but Fernand treated her like trips-once bought expensive furs for a princess, wining and dining her till her in Montreal-and once brought her head reeled. Then he put her her younger sister from Chicago and through ,the mill-tau&$ her how to put her to work in a n Orienial minister to the lust of the Orientals. how. She stayed in the hotel, a prisoner of Finally a quarrel flamed and Fran- fear and shame. ces fled, Fernand shaking his fist after her and swearing dire vengeance. She went back to her mother H E SHIFTED HE,R from house in Chicago, gasped out the whole re- to house. To stifle the shame that volting story to her, then swallowed cried out i n her dreams, 'She took a corrosive p ~ s w nand died in agony to narootics, a s have many of the a few days later, screaming for fear Corsican's girls. of Fernand Le Gorse. Today, at henty-three, Bunny ?Jhrowing caution to the winds, A ~ d ~ e r s o is n a n aged wreck of a Fernand now made fewer trips to woman. Mon(trea1, and instead put young Then Fernand took up with a woAmerican girls in the Syndicate's man nearer his own age--one Nini houses. Perallaud, former wife of one of One flagrant case was that of 16- the bartenders. I t was probbly more year old Bunny Anderson, who hitch- of a business partnership than a love hiked dwwn from Portland to find a affair, h t i t lasted longer %an had job in San Francisco and made any of the Corsican's previous confriends with a cab d r i v e , wlho prom- nections. ised to find her a place tn live. He Fernand set u p his headquarters took her to the Bronx Holtel, one of i n a bar and cafe on Clay Street, a the lowest Oriental dives on North stone's thraw from the Hall of Justice Beach. F e ~ n a n d , pleased with the and the office of his bail-bmd broker luscious new arrival, gave the cab- fixer. He placed Nini in charge of man five dollars for his senices. the Orierutal brothel upstairs. Bunny Andferson wanted to ,run The Corsican was riding higih now;

CRUSHING AMERICA'S CRIME LORD thousands of dollars poured i n from , hisc graft collections, from the piti-

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ful earnings of his women, from +.he sale of false citizenship papers, false passports, etc. Then came the graft explosiontoudhed off by the revelation by Jcvhn V. Lewis, International Revenue Collector, that he had collected huge income tax arrears from crooked San F~ancisoopolice officers. The District Attorney hired Edwin N. Atherton, former G-man, a s special investigator to make an impartial probe of graft and report to the grand jury. Atherton laid bare f i e huge bank accounts of a number of officers, and, when they refused to testify before the grand jury, thirteen of them were dismisskd f m the force. One of Atherton's undercover uperatives, Ben Belasco, was convinced that the alien vice operators, standing in fear of deportation, constituted the city's biggest g r a f t problem-the police and men like Fernalid could extort a s much a s they wanted from them without fear of plaint. Belasco heard Fernand's name whispered again and again a s the Napoleon of the Syndicate. Belasco recruited the services of a n underworld woman whom we shall call Betty, and with her went to Fernand on the pretex that they wanted to open a brothel. Big, sloppy Fernand welcomed them royally a t his Clay street clearinghouse, treated them to important abh dnthe. "Fernand a n fix anything!" he boasted, and offered to set Betty up in a ihotel on Market street, for $500. He detailed how he would arrange police protection for then, take care of any trouble. Belasoo egged him on, pmtending to disbelieve in his power a s a fixer. Fernand bragged of how he had squared a shooting affray in a Kearney street brothel, a block from police Headquarters. "Well, anyway," Belasco told him, "there's one fellow you can't fixand that's the Old Man with the Whiskers!" "Bah!" Fernand exploded. "I can fix him too!" He went on to detail how a Cor-

sican brothel-keeper named "Herbert" Convinced that criminal convictions had been deported, and how he had could nmot be obtained in the state arranged for his return. me man courts, Atherton turned over his was now running a Kearney street evidence to the Federal immigration place unmolested, he said. authorities, who immediately launchBelasco left Fernand, promising to ed a n investigation of their own come back and close the deal; swiftly When Fernand heard Belasa, was he made the rounds of North Beach, working for Atheton, he was furfound that the man known a s Her- ious. He called him up, threatened to bert was one Abel Ducayla. kill hi,% offered to meet him anywhere With operatives Howard Pbilbrick, and fight i t out. Belasco arranged Lw Niuhols, and Ed. Hall, Belasco a street-corner meeting. arrested Abel Ducayla for questioning. Fernand drove up to the appointed The harrassed little man broke dovn spot, approached the operative with and talked. He explained that he his hand under his coat. had re-entered the country illegally "1'11 kill you," he hissed. through his m ingenuilty and not "I dton't think you'd want to do through any help from Fernand. He that out in public, here." Belasco told details of police payoffs. On the soothed him. "Come around the strength of this story, two afficers corner, to the hotel-" were arrested on bribery charges, but He grabbed Fernand's arm. The later acquitted when Ducayla, in mor- big Corsican, yellow a t heart, trerntal terror, refused to take 6he stand bled and shook loose. Muttering against them curses, he ran back to his car.

CRUSHING AMERICA'S CRIME LORD

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A F E W DAYS 'I~ATER,in midOctober, 1936, a posse headed by Philbrick and Belasco arrested Fernai~d, questioning him for hours. He talked rather freely, boasted of his connections, refused absolutely to take the stand against anyone. Then the i,migration authcrities moved in, asked Fernan'd for a detailed statement of his stay in t h e United States. He said he had first come here from Calgary, Canada, in 1922, and had not been out of the Unitred States since then. He knew the immigration lawthat any alien who entered the country, legally or illegally, before July 1,1924, canot be deported. llhe immigration inspectors che.:k-

ed up, found ample evidence that Fernand had left and reentered + I I ~ United States many times since 1924, on his trips to Montreal. He had brazenly used his own name, never dreaming he would be tripped up. He was charged with making a false statement, and was released on

bond. The Federal Bureau of Invetiglooked into Ondella's history, wit11 a view to White Slave prosecution for the Canadian and Montana trips, but no direct evidence could be secured; witnesses would not talk. The GMen were finally satisfied to let tne a shrewd counsellor when his girlcase rest with the immigration au- fniend, Nini, died suddenly. thorities, who had iron-clad evidetlce His loss was balmed,' however,, by of violation of the immigration lams. the fact that she died without a will, The f a t Corsican had falslen a t leaving a sizeable fortune--estimate? last. Immune from the police, he by some at $20,00&which he took couldn't fix the Old Man with the over. F e r n a ~ d le Corse wriggled and Whiskers. squirmed, tried every legal dodge, to The immigration men were also no avail. His pal, Big Jim Coleman, working on Abel DucayEa. They was no longer on hand to help himfound that he and his consort, Auna he had retired from the force and Roberts, had registered under false fled the city a t the s t a r t of bhe innames a t the last national election. vestigation. Ducayla and . the girls pleaded Finally, after months, during which guilty. ~ u c a ~ was l a sentenced to a h e arranged the affairs of his shatyear and a day in McNeil Island, and tered Syndicate as best he could, was deported to France on his reledse Fernand was ordered deported. . few months ago. Anna Roberts was Federal men are still a t work it on probation on condition thzt smashing the alien Syndicate. TEpy e leave the country' immediatcly, have arrested Olga Manzi, proprietiich she did. I ' ress of a notorious brothel in the ernand, Praiting for trial o r Je- shadow of the City Hall. She w a s " ation ac.tion, was deprived of charged with having fraudulently

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obtained citizenship papers in 1933. She was also ordered deported. She was a close friend of Fernand; she had found to her cost that he could not square the federal cost for her. The grip of the Syndicate is 'broken, and the hand of Fear is lifted from San Francisco's underworld with the lifting of the f a t shadow of the Corsican He is still getting revenue f n m three Oriental houses-for such places have J w a y s existed, and probably always will-but the empire of vici is smashed. Fernand was comparibively lucky. Instead of sitting in an Alcatraz cell like AI Capone, he can end his days in his native Corsican, trying to figure out why he couldn't chill t i e beef with bhe Old Man with the W#hiskers. Provided, of course, that he's still alive over there.

When Convicts Become Too Smart For Their O w n Good, Fireworks Are Bound to Result.

Y

OU'D think that the strict

supervision over convicts would make i t impossible for them to carry on rackets inside the walls. But there are many crooked things a crooked mind can originate, whether its possessor is behind bars or free. Any prison-wise guard would attest the truth of this.

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The moment an experienced prisoner gets "on location" in the job to which he i s assigned, he looks around to see how he can use it to his own advantage. A forger whom I knew, Easterday by name, was no differen* from the rest. When placed in the office of the record clerk, he quickly saw something his predecessors in that office had overlooked. Easterday began to circulate among prisoners known to ,be members of "swdll mobs" still operating, who might be willing t o pay well for any benefit to t'heir unfortunate brother in stir. In a short time he had some good connections, and promptly went to work on ,his new racket. About six m m t s s later a detective oame to the institution for a talk

with "Wild Bill" Murbha. He thought Murbha, who had been sent up from his city, might give him some information he needed. The detective was informed by the deputy warpen that Wild Bil(1 had been released following the expiration of his sentence six months or so before. "That's funny," the detective said. "I figured he had still another six months t o serve." The deputy sent for Murtha's commitment and other papers. "Here i t is," he explained. "He got sentence of four years which expired six months ago.'' "Four years!" exclaimed the officer. "Why, he got five years. I ought to know. I worked on the case and was in court when he was sentenced." The deputy warden sensed something was wrong. He put in a long distance call to the clerk of the court had M convicted. in which Murthurtha What he heard caused him to make an immediate investigation, and t o suspend the release of all prisoners until it was completed. The investigation revealed that Easterday was conducting a nice little racket in the record clerk's office

a

which was bringing him huadreds'of dollars in good U.S. min. Ris procedure was simple enough. First he would miake a contact with a prisoner, and ask him how much it would be worth if he got a year 'cut from his sentam. For a price agreed upon and deposited with a friend of Easterday's on the outside, the forger would alter the records and cut a year off the man's sentence. I t wasn't a t all difficult. All Easterday did was to change the commitment and whatever additional papers there were in the case, to mice them appear that 8he sentence was one year less than i t actually was. When the list of prisoners going out for each day was made u p and handed o v a to the officers who "dmssed out" such men, the name of the one who had bought a year's freedom would be on the list just that much ahead of the real date. The usual routine check of the papers would show IAe date to be apparently correct. A half dozen other prisonem besides Murtha had received simi~lar "cornmutations" of sentence through the ingenious efforts of this chronic racketeer.

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The By ANN STUAEIT And so began th,e plannin'g of the perfect crime. The two men went back to Ornaha and in May, 1900, began their preparations. They rented a house in -a.suburb. Da+n,r six . . --" months' rent in advance. ~ e x t Clrowe bought two h m s and a covered carriage, stabling them in a shed by the side of the house. Each day for two months they drove t h i s carriage past the Cudahay home, but catching sight of young Edward a d a h a v . men on ~~~~b~~ 18. the& chance 'came. On this afternoon as they drove past, the door opened and Edward came out and began t o walk down the street. As he turned the corner, out of sight of the house, e o w e drove the carriage u p to him. Calahan jumped down and grabbed young Edward by the shoulder. "WE WANT you, Eddie McGee," shouted Crowe. "We're police officers. We know you're on the run from a reform school.'' Edward protested that his namle was Cudahy. It was useless. Crowe said he would have t o go with them to the station for identification. So the boy shrugged his shoulder? ---

YOUNG man stood in a small street in Omaha, Nebraska, fiercely shaking his fist at a shop on the other side of the road. He was talking out loud in his anger, swearing vengeance against its owner Edward Cudahy, *soonto became known throughout America as the meat-packing,king.

at young man was Pat Crowe, and he believed that Cuclahy hac for& him out of business. On that day, many years ago, he decided that Chdahy should pay the price. Ther. Thirteen years one day Crowe picked up a paper and read that Gudahy's son was sixteen. A plan of revenge began to take shape in his mind.

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'WILL YOU help me to get $25,000?" he asked Calahan, a pal of his. "I'd go through fire and water for a tgnrth d that," declared Calahan.

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and climbed into the carriage, thinking that the mistake would be easily cleared up when they reached the police station. But the second she entered the car, riage a coat was flung over his head and a a n thrust in his side. "Keep @.et, do a s you're told aud you won't be f~urt," Cmwe warned him. "But make a sound and 1'11 !,ut a bullet through When they reached the ho~lsethe frightened lad was bundled inside. Before they lit a lamp a bandage was tied r o d young C'udahy's eyes. He was warned not t o remove it if he valued his life. Then Crowe s a t down to write a ransom note t o his father. It was a brutal note. It demanded $25,000 in gold. If the money was not handed over, Edward was t o be blinded with acid before being sent back home. Mr. Cudahy was ordered to take his carriage and drive out of town the next night a t seven o'clock until he came to the bridge over the Papio River. A lantern would be burning there. With him he was to take a sack, containing the money in gold

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To#daya seventy#year.oldman sits in a hotel, at peace with the world, Yet he committed one of the most amaziag crimes in the world!

THE PERFECT CRIME coin, which he A s to drop by the lantern, and then drive straight back t o town. If he made this journey accompanied by police, o r if there was any attempt to capture the kidnappers--well, Edward woultl lose his TYING THE NOTE to a stick, Crowe walked past the Cudahy mansion and flung i t on to the lawn. When darkness fell, he went ol;t to the bridge and lit his lantern. Then h e hid himself in a little copse overlooking the bridge, holding his gun cocked. Soon a carriage approicl-ed, 2nd stopped by the bridge. The driver and Cudahy got out and carried a heavy sack to the lanterfi, stepped back in@ their carriage and drove off. Crowe came out of the copbe and advanced, to the sack. He 'opened it, ran his hands through dully gleaming gold pieces-the ransom hati been paid. He was revenged on Cudahy! He carried the money home, where Chlahan excitedly helped him to count it. I t was all there, so they took Edward, put him in the carriage and drove him to within three streets of his home. They let him crut and drove off. After dividing t h e gold the kidnappers separated. Calahan went to shelter a t a friend's house, and Crowe rode out of town to a farm, where he planned to stay until the hunt had died down. The police and Pinkerton's dreaded detective agency were determined to capture the criminals, and things began to grow too warm for Crowe. He made his way to the coast and shipped for South Africa. Then began one of the comedies of American justice. Calahan began spending gold twenty do!lar pieces. He was arrested. Edward Cudahy recognized his voice. Gradually a damning case was built up against him. But when the case came to' trial, strangely enough the jury acquitted him. Crowe went on a trip and returned a year later--only to learn t h a t he was still suspected. For several years he dodged the police. Then he grew ' weary and decided to give himself up. He was sent back to Omaha t o be tried. S

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$1.98 Shipped Prepaid GOLDEN BOOKS OF AMERICA 135 Yonge St. The case lasted two weeks. Among the evidence was a letter written by C r m e t o a friend confessing the crime. And no defence evidence was put forward. A conviction seemed a certainty. The jury were out of the court for four hours. When they came back they gave the verdict of "Not guilty!"

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I T WAS THE most amazing decision of any American court. It turned P a t Crowe into the man who commited the perfect crime.

Toronto 1, Ont. He kidnapped a boy, got the ransom money, confessed his crime, yet was set free without a stain on his character-and allowed to keep his share of the ransom money! Whether he got off scot-free because he was popular in Omaha, or because the jury considered he had not harmed the boy, no one will ever know. To-day, Crowe, aged seventy, sits in a New York Hotel a t ,peace with the world. And in Omaha, now a prosperous business man, is Edward Cudahy - - o n e the victim of the perfect crime.

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en Conversion Is By

the Reverend Roy

W.

oamat'ion Merrificld

Pastor of the Congregational Christian Church,

Urbana, Illinois

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Not only in reformatories, but in all walks of life from the highest to the lowest, misguided people have slipped into the habit of jeering a t religion a s a solace for the soft, a s something sissy. On the contrary, Ieligion is reason grown heroic. Genuine religion is the hero in a man. I t girds him to hold his highest standards against all odds. The man of real strength is the man who possesses the true spirit of Jesus which carries him through ail temptations with the highest possible courage.

MAN who lacks moral standards and who never has found it in his heart to cultivate the spiritual values of life is likely to fall below the standards of the law at almost any time. Many fall, but not all are caught. Here lies the danger of thinking that crime is an easy life which can be carried on indefinitely with impunity. From this beginning grows the habitual criminal, whose chances for complete reforination are none too good.

Presenting religion a s a challenge to strength and service annoys maxy people. They insist 011 being coddled in their spiritual laziness. Religion should ,be accepted as a vital factor in everyday life; not a s a mere belief of a protector on high, standing ready to fulfil1 every wish of a spoiled child. True reIigion place God's will in the forefront.

As a former chaplain of' the Indiana State Reformatory a t Jeffersonville, where the inmates were from 16 to 30 years of age, I encountered many of this type. But I found that in the younger ,boys, convicted for their first misdemeanors, was more hope for salvation. A reformatory needs cultivation of the religious spirit in order to send thesc boys back into Society as useful citizens of our country and of the Kingdom of God. How can this great and important task be translated into practical action? Ey long hours of personal contact with the inmates, by religious services and education a t these institutions of correction. Boys can be helped to feel a sense of responsibility for others and for duties entrusted t o them. Sometimes a sadly deflated ego can be bolstered up in a boy who feels that he has gone so f a r down-hill that nothing could matter. This can happen when he knows that someone is interested in him. This method warked with one youngster named Claude who was sentenced to the reformatory from one to thirteen years. Claude didn't have the background of a criminal. Wanting to keep him segregated a s much a s possible from more hardened inmates, I made him my messenger and he had the run of the institution. Shortly I discovered Be had violated this trust by smoking. Instead of censuring him, I talked over the situation with him and made him a promise. If he would cease smoking and carrying tobacco around while working for me, I would not report him.

The Reverend Merrifield : "Creais the world's most tive religion powerful preventive of all crime".

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,Clande proved that he deserved the responsibility I placed in him, behaved well and received his parole. Letters I received from him for many years afterward assured me that he was keeping straight.

BOYS may not admit it, but they want sympathy. If only we could touch the tender spot in their personalities! Many of the first offenders haven't done anything terribly wrong. And in a few cases they have been railroaded into the institution, hard a s i t may be t o believe. I learnec! more froM the boys than did the prison officials because I respected their confidences and nothing they ever told me was used against them. These boys who have not strayed f a r from the path of decent living can be raabilitated. If they can realize that there is a force ready 40 work for them and to help them !f they truly give their hearts to God, Who yearns to be their daily comrade, then they find the true reformation. Only in this way can they be led into the victorious way of life.

Every correctional institution has its share of inmates bordering oli feeble-mindedness. They present a problem with very little chance of solution. More enlightcned knowledge and widespread practise af eugenics eventually would solve the problem of these mental misfits for whom the future is so hopeless. They ought not to be allowed to propagate their kind. In addition, many inmates come from homes where the parents a r e divorced. They never have experienced decent home life, never have been exposed to the character-building influences of the Church. The greatest menace of a reformatory or prison Iies in the mingling of first offenders vrith the older, hardboiled criminals incarcerated there. That is why it is important for boys to be apprehended the first time they break the law and to have a chance to be traightened out before $hey become crime addicts. The plan of putting first offenders on probation is excellent, providing they seem worthy of such t~ust. .Can anything be done about these men who have become steeped in crime? Their chances look poor because the usual way of these felons is to continue in criine until they die in prison, are murdered by one of their own kind or die of disease. Jt

(Continued on back of cover)

is true, however, that some of t l ~ e good. He himself m h t want to be lowest and most depraved have saved; !his heart and mind must be changed their lives, have been gen- touched somehow. uinely. conve$ed. But sometimes the work brings Success and the iron of religion enters The chaplain i n one of these in- the soul of these hu,man zeros and stitutions m m t not visualize these transforms them into the integers of men In their present condition but decent individuals. must love them for what they may But prevention is a hundred times be in their hearts and bodies and souls. I t requires much imagina- better than a (belated cure. Mothers tion and perseverance to work this and fathers would be wiser these days vision into a reality. It means spend- if they encauraged the manifestation ing hours with them day after day of the religious spirit in the home and week atfter week. Even these where it would 'become a p a r t of efTorts may lbe futile when a man everyday life. They should estabhas implacably closed his mind to all lish family devotions in the home

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e3iich a r e so very important; the

~ i l ysaying of grace, a time set aaide for prayer. Their dhildren &&uld have the beneficial experience ttending church school and the h service. en, ~ h ~ i lthey e are yaung and ,,,&ive to character-building influences, they would absonb creative religion, which is the world's most powerful preventative of all crime, sorrow and futility. Then there would be fewer in~matesof prisons and ref~r~matories. T H E E'ND

ODDS AND THE CRIMINAL Continued from inside front cover

I s there some way whereby we can give the criminal offender care that is a t once brotherley and intelligent, and a t the same time protect Society from the acts af the criminal? I s i t possible to go further and remove the fundamenbal causes of crime? There is no easy solution to this p r ~ b lem. We must recognize the menacing fact revealed in the following from the Gluecks: "It might (be argued that eve? case, no matter how 'hardened, slhould ,be regarded a s promising of reformation. So f a r a s experience goes, however, this contention will not hold water. A deplorable proportion of criminals never reform. The reason for this may ;be our vwy imperfect technique. But a t any rate, with thle methods thus f a r tried by civilized Society, there has always been a considerable residue af persons who do not respond to any known form of correctional or punitive treatment. Social facilities are limited, and emphasis must therefore be placed on the most promising humtan material. The great social need is to evolve through exprimmbtion, more efficient methods of analyzing and remaking the human personality. But that is a task of colossal proportions; and until such time a s definite progress in this direction has been reflected in a fundamental reconstructioh of our correctional instruments, the existence of a portion of the criminal population, not only unamenable to modern rehabilitative methods, but permanently dangerous to Society, must be reckoned with."

THE pmblem of crime must be seen whole. There is a section d our population that is "permanently dsn-

gerous to Society." J. Edgar Hoover was called upon to face this element. He has been misrepresented and made to appear out of sympathy with constructive efforts for the reformation of the criminal. As a matter of fact, Mr. Hoover has said: "I do not know of a n y other experienced law enforcement officer who has, and certainly I have never myself, questioned the wisdom and desirabihty of parole a s a p a r t of the program, for the reformation and rehabilitation of criminals. On every occasion when I have referred to the problems of parole, I have stated specifically and emphatically that I believe in the principal of parole, but I have c o n d a n e d in strong language, and I shall continue to condemn in just a s strong language the maladministration*?f the parole system. Y

There is no s i ; h p p r o a c h to the problem of crime. Just a s we unite the research students of the laboratory, t%e physicians and surgeons in applied medicine, the public health officials, and numerous other agencies to combat disease, so too we must unite all those forces that a r e e ~ e n t i a to l the removal-& bhe causes of'.-e and the rehab'litation of the criminal himself.

Dcrime p d ? Of course not. I doubt t h a t it is satisfying even to the successful criminal. He lives in fear. If he has intelligence, he knows h e i s a parasite. There can I be no basic satisfaction here. have sought to show the necessity of uniting; all the forces necewary to eliminate the terrific burden of the cost of crime. Roscoe Pound in hBs ",Criminal Justicre i n America" says: "In criminal law this problem takei the %m

of quest for a workable balance htween the general security and the individual life As to systematized individualizalation, the very conception of law, of a government of laws and not of men, calls for a system, while the whole trend of psychology and penology indicates individualization, making the penal treatment fit the offender, dealing with a dangerous man rather than the dangerous act a s the line of progress. Here again i s a prablem in which there *must ;be co-operation of social scientist. psychologist, physiclan and lawyer. Indeed, the philosopher may well contribute, for this problem runs back to one w h i d is fundamental in social, in legal, in penal philosophy. It comes to the problem of the division of labor and allocation af activities in a complex society, reconciled with that spontaneous initiative and free quest for individual ends which is a main source of progress."

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Religion #maymake a fundamental contri'bution to this solution. I t insists upon building a just social order. I t calls upon us to surround the rising generation with all known influences that make for good citizenship and rich personalitiw. ICnowing that the truth makes us free, it calls upon us to face scientific facts as revealed by sincere students and ,bewilling to recognize the power of environment and heredity in causing crime. Hysteria has no place in this field.

It calls for the integrated personality religion produces seeking to serve a brother whose personality is a t war with itself. I t would likewi,se remove the causes that produce such a personality.

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