SAVED BY BLUFF

Hokitika Guardian, 3 January 1931, Page 6

SAVED BY BLUFF

ENGLISH A 1 AN IN CHICAGO

An Englishman, Air George W. Fellowes, who knows more about Chicago gunmen and racketeers than most Americans, returned to London after waging war for many years against the leaders of the underworld. “To set foot in any- of the cities where I. have been- acting ,as a secret service investigator,” lie said, “would mean my death.” - • - “Al.v job;was to investigate fraudulent claims on, behalf of a great. American insurance company. I became , a secret service investigator in the State of California, and my war on lii-jackers, racketeers, and gangsters became so fierce that I. was put 011 their murder list.

“I have met Al Capone, the Chicago leader. I saw him in the police ‘shadow-box’—a screen stage flooded with powerful lights. The police can observe their victim in the box, but lie cannot sec them. Al Capone was brought up for investigation, but that was all.

“I know most of the tricks of the racketeers,: IT; knew a police official who had a /private telephone in his house, and lie; used it for con versa tions with his gangster friends about .graft; There is the case of a police inspector who took a■ £SOOO bribe not to investigate: a ; case. T met ;a.- saloon keeper who became chief of police; And 1 spent a Aveek in the hospital after an interview with the police, yho supposed I had some secret documents: on me. THE HICKS MURDER CASE. “I figured in the murder mystery of Hicks, the St. Louis lawyer. Hicks got into trouble with the gangsters. Three men set upon him in one of the leading hotels in the city, and he was killed by a gun with a silenc-cr. They dragged tlie dead man through the vestibule—tlie guests believing it was just a case of a. drunken man being helped home by his friends—and dropped him in a ditch eight miles away. They peppered the body and the ground around it with shot to create the impression that the murder bad- been committed there. “An ex-convict then came on the scene. He ‘split’ and said that '£looo bad passed between the gang and a police official. The ex-convict was shot dead bv six policemen and my life was threatened. “I was lured to an office by a telephone message to my wife, bundled into a car and taken for a five-hour ride, which I was told would be my last. But I bluffed them. T told them that they were being followed by the police, and after half-killing me, they threw me out on to the road. “They were after documents, hut the one I have in my pocket now.” said AD* Fellowes, producing a typed confession by one of tlie gang, “provides the reason for my never going back to St. Louis.”