Journeymen v. Crooks

When an honest young Hamburger seeks to enter the Hamburg Guild of Journeymen Carpenters, he faces harsh Medieval tribulations, searching tests. After suitable apprenticeship he must wander about Germany, carpentering, for three years. As a full-fledged member of the Journeymen's Guild, the proud young Hamburger wears a broad, black hat, extra wide black trousers, and heavy gold earrings. He may even go to Berlin, once in five years, for a jolly convention, and there get into trouble--as a great many Hamburger Guildsmen did last week. Dishonest young Berliners--sneakthieves and bandy-legged pimps--aspire to the Ever Loyal Club. In discreet Berlin police circles it is admitted that the elusive, notorious Club contains the cream of German crookdom. Traditionally a tithe of the loot of each Ever Loyal is contributed to a fund from which lawyers are richly fed when Club members get arrested. Every so often despatches tell that the Ever Loyals have held another unexpected, cataclysmic midnight convention in Berlin. Always on these occasions they appear in hired or stolen tuxedoes, cruising and boozing in a fleet of taxicabs. One night last week on Berlin's Broadway--the garish and blazing Kurfursten-Damm--cruising crooks met honest, conventioning Hamburgers, quarreled, fought with guns and knives. It appeared that the shooting and knifing had begun--as such things will--with a wench, buxom Gretchen Schmaltz. Originally Fraulein Schmaltz appeared to have favored and sipped beer with a tuxedoed Ever Loyal. When he excused himself for a moment, Gretchen responded to the ogle of a dashing old Hamburger Journeyman, clapped his broad black hat upon her head, called for more beer and presently begged for one of the Guildsman's gold earrings. While they dawdled the crook returned, drew a knife on the carpenter. Though old, the Hamburger was still potent. Seizing the crook's slender wrist he wrenched away the knife; seizing his coat collar and seat of trousers he hurled him sprawling into a Kurfuersten-Damm gutter, returned to Gretchen. Half an hour later some 30 taxis teeming with tuxedoed crooks drew up outside the Hamburger convention. Though the Journeymen flung chairs, mightfully defending themselves, the crooks opened with Mauser pistols, shot one Hamburger dead, wounded seven.