Nos. II & 27

Last week Col. Henry Breckinridge, friend and legal adviser of Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, left his client's side for the first time in more than two months, flew to the Kentucky Derby. John Hughes Curtis, Norfolk, Va. boat builder, vanished on another of his mysterious yacht cruises.

Other agents and agencies in the search for Col. Lindbergh's kidnapped child seemed no closer to success than they were on the windy night of March 1, when the baby was snatched from his New Jersey nursery. But in Washington last week another fantastic sideshow in the case was revealed. Principal in this show was a bad actor who first came to fame in the Harding era -- Gaston Bullock Means.

Bad Actor Means, 53, a thick-necked, slackjawed, dimpled-cheeked Southerner, is the author of The Strange Death of President Harding in which it is intimated that Mrs. Harding poisoned her husband (TIME, March 31, 1930). The book was written after Means had served three years (1925-28) in Atlanta Penitentiary for bribery and violation of the Prohibition laws. Before that he had turned on his employer, onetime Attorney General Harry Micajah Daugherty, with tall tales before a Senate Committee about the "Ohio Gang's" activities. Before the U. S. entered the War, he says, he served with the German spy system in the U. S., once received $1,000,000 from a German agent at a midnight rendezvous in Trinity Churchyard, Manhattan. Further in his past lies an astounding record of crime and near-crime. At one time or another, Gaston Means, a sleuth by profession, has been indicted for breach of promise, impersonating an officer, fraud, bribery, forgery, murder. He once told a Senate committee that ''being indicted" was his business. Last November he was arrested for beating his wife.

It was no great surprise to Gaston Means when a U. S. deputy marshal and a special Department of Justice agent stopped his expensive, chauffeured car on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue one day last week and took him into custody.

The charge on which he was apprehended was, however, startling : that he had bilked affluent Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond, estranged wife of the publisher of the Washington Post and Cincinnati Enquirer, out of $106,000 on the pretext that he could help her find the Lindbergh baby.

Rich Mrs. McLean, a mining tycoon's daughter much in the Washington lime light, interested herself in the Lindbergh kidnapping as early as March 4. In 1919 she, too, had lost her firstborn; 9-year-old Vinson, the "Hundred-Million-Dollar Baby" who slept in a crib decorated with gold, gift of Leopold, King of the Belgians. In an unguarded moment her child was ground to death under an automobile's wheels. Mrs. McLean remembered Gaston Means from the good old Harding days when her husband played poker with the Ohio Gang, decided to hire him to trace the Lindbergh baby. A conference was arranged attended by Captain Emory S. Land, U. S. N., Col. Lindbergh's cousin, and Rev. Francis J. Hurney, pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Means said that the presence of a cleric in the negotiations would cement the kidnappers' confidence.

Means told the gathering that he had recently met a man with whom he served in Atlanta Penitentiary. The man had suggested that he and Means abduct the Lindbergh baby. This suggestion, Means said, he had indignantly spurned, but he was willing to find out if the man had carried out the project himself. After a short dis appearance Means returned to Washington with the news that, sure enough, his erst while jailmate was the one who had done the job. It would take $50,000 ransom, a $50,000 fee for himself and $6,000 for expenses to effect the child's return. Capt.

Land went to Hopewell, consulted Col.

Lindbergh, returned with word that Col.

Lindbergh welcomed Mrs. McLean's assistance and would repay her if she succeeded in bringing his child back home.

Mrs. McLean delivered, without receipt, the $106,000 into Means's hands in unmarked $10 and $20 bills on March 7.

Means at once began to give Mrs. Mc Lean her money's worth in detective-story melodrama.

First he gave all the principals numbers.

His was No. 27. Mrs. McLean's was No.

11. Means had her go to Aiken, S. C. where she was introduced to a sinister character with a gun. Then she made a trip to El Paso, Tex., where the child was to be delivered. For these fruitless expeditions the ever plausible Means had excuses. He made at least 20 promises to deliver the child within 24 hours. Once he swore he had held the baby in his arms.

At last, on April 1, Mrs. McLean turned the matter over to her attorneys. She was advised to ask Means to return her money. He agreed to get it from where he had hidden it near his old home at Concord, N. C. When he failed to return it, Means had still another yarn to tell. He said that on his way back to Washington with the $100,000 he was accosted at Alexandria, Va. by an unknown who whispered the mystic word "Eleven!" into his ear. Thinking that this must be Mrs. McLean's representative, he turned the money over to the stranger. At this point the credulity of Mrs. McLean snapped. She went to Chief J. Edgar Hoover of the Department of Justice's Investigation Bureau and swore out a warrant to be served the next time Means stepped inside the District of Columbia.

Smiling under arrest, Means had nothing to say to the Press save that he was sure he would be cleared, the inference being that he felt no more criminally implicated than John F. ("Jafsie") Condon, the retired Bronx school teacher who gave $50,000 of Col. Lindbergh's money to someone who failed to surrender the child in return. Means's bail was set at $100,000.

"While we are not trying him for his past crimes," said U. S. Attorney Leo Rover, explaining the size of the bond, "my information regarding his past activities leads me to believe that if the bond is not set he will not be here."

Among the many fantastic reports that came to Mr. Rover concerning Means's fantastic activities was one that a man and a woman had tried in North Carolina to buy a baby resembling the missing Lind bergh.

Mrs. McLean explained her part in the affair thus: "My plan was carried out without the knowledge of my closest friends and without the knowledge of my attorneys. When it became evident that no clue of any value had been discovered, I realized that the plan had failed. With respect to Gaston B. Means, who acted as intermediary, that is a matter which is now in the hands of the authorities."

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