Flight to Athens

Servants in the small Hotel Lincoln, in Paris,* were mildly surprised one evening last week to see the short, white-mustached old Americain who had been stopping at the hotel with his sick wife for several weeks, making his way furtively out of the house through the dim-lit service entrance. With him was his alert, dark-haired son, who had just arrived from the U. S. The son carried a small handbag. In the street they hailed a taxi, vanished into the night.

The taxi driver took them to the Gare de Lyon. They caught the midnight express for Italy. Early the next day they were across the border, whizzing through mountains among which run great electric power lines. Ivar Kreuger passed through that countryside many times on his trips to Rome for secret transactions. Alfred Lowenstein played financial chess writh Italian power projects until he plunged from an airplane into the English Channel.

The old man and his son got off the train at Turin. It was afternoon and they spent the night there, then went on to Milan. There they went to the office of a travel agency. "I am Samuel Insull," he said. "You know who I am?" He was perfectly casual, displayed a thick roll of banknotes. The clerk knew he was a U. S. utility tycoon whose fortune had been swept away. He did not know that Samuel Insull was under indictment in Chicago for larceny and embezzlement, that the U. S. State Department was spattering Europe with cables asking his whereabouts. The agent provided air transportation to Rome. Samuel Insull said good-by to his son who went back to the hotel, paid a $13 bill, then traveled back to Paris and his mother.

While Samuel Insull and his son were speeding toward Turin, newshawks in Paris flocked to the Hotel Lincoln. He had promised them an interview at 10:30 a. m., thus insuring himself a good chance for a clean getaway the night before. The reporters grew impatient. When Mrs. Insull, recently ill and still wan and weak, came out to go shopping they besieged her. "Please let me alone!" she cried hysterically. "I know nothing about my husband's affairs. Please, please let me alone!" Years ago Gladys Wallis was a pretty actress. The titles of some of her plays when up & coming Sam Insull courted her were For Money, On Probation, Brother John.

Reporters, sensing that sly old Samuel Insull was at last in full flight, took up the hunt. By the time they had followed the trail to Turin, Samuel Insull was safely on his way to Rome.

At Rome he took a plane for Tirana. Albania, then flew on to Salonika. There he changed to train for Athens. Mr. Insull hurried to the Grande Bretagne Hotel. In Greece, his lawyers had told him, he would be safe from extradition.

On his first morning in Athens, Mr. Insull sat on a balcony sipping a cup of strong Turkish coffee. He may have noticed a number of cars around his hotel, the drivers all eying him. Finally an Athenian policeman emerged from one car and approached Mr. Insull, informed him he was under arrest. The American Legation had asked Athenian police to detain him in order to give the U. S. State Department time to decide whether or not to ask Greece, with which no extradition treaty has been completely established, to send Mr. Insull back to face U. S. justice.

In Chicago while certain holders of Insull Utilities Investments, Inc. debentures were filing suit to recover $10,000,000 of securities pledged under bank loans, it was revealed that coded legal advice had been cabled to Mr. Insull as he fled to Athens.

While Samuel Insull was in flight, his long-nosed brother Martin John Insull was tossing on a cot in one of the dingiest, harshest jails in Canada. There was no running water. The meals were terrible. He was not allowed to puff his pipe.

His jailing followed a frantic day. At 3:30 a. m. a Chicago Assistant State's Attorney had awakened him at his $20-a-week boarding house in Orillia, Ont. and demanded his voluntary return to Chicago. He flatly refused. Next morning he and his loyal friends Mr. & Mrs. William Barker of Highland Park, Ill. who had arrived in their car during the night to be with him, motored to Toronto to see lawyers. A Canadian warrant for his arrest had been issued, he was advised to surrender. At 9:30 p. m. he gave himself up to the Canadian police in the small town of Barrie, Ont. There was a brief hearing before a judge as lank, as gaunt, as curt as he. And then, through a driving rain, he was driven to jail.

After two days he was released on $50,000 bail. Sick and tired, he returned to the boarding house in Orillia. The outcome seemed certain, and he showed that he knew it. Waving a thin hand at reporters he called. "I'll see you in Chicago."

*One block away is the residence of Henry M.

Blacknier, fugitive from the Teapot Dome oil scandal.

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