Cruise Of The Carma

Last week 15 paying members of a "dude" adventure cruise, scheduled to leave Long Beach, Calif, for the South Seas', prematurely got a melodramatic money's-worth while their boat was still tied to the dock. The trip's impresario, a middle-aged professional soldier-of-for-tune named Valerian Johannes Tieczynski, alias Captain Walter Wanderwell, fantastically paid for his clients' thrill with his life.

During supper a man's face appeared at a screened porthole of the Wanderwell schooner Carma, onetime rumrunner bought at Government auction. The stranger asked: "Where is Captain Wanderwell?"

"Are you the electrician?" asked Chief Engineer Cuthbert Willis.

"No, but I know a lot about electricity."

"The Captain's aft in the next cabin."

Followed a shot. When the paying adventurers next saw him. Captain Wanderwell was slumped on the floor, a bullet from a .38 calibre pistol in his back, one hand over his face, the other clutching a bunch of keys. Just as no one had seen the stranger come aboard, no one saw him debark. Police investigation soon revealed that the Captain, a Pole interned at Atlanta during the War on suspicion of being a spy, had made a business of organizing bizarre junkets, soliciting junketeers through newspapers. He had been married three times. Only one bulkhead separated the dead man from his two sleeping children, Valerio, 7, and Nile, 6. His wife Aloha, young and comely, was reported in Hollywood at the time of shooting.

Federal agents, ever vigilant for evidence of gunrunning, became interested in the case when 30 rifles were found aboard the Carma. But the murdering slug came from none of these weapons. One of the ship's company, all of whom signed on as crew when harbor officials declared the Carma unseaworthy, was Lord Edward Eugene Fernando Montagu, self-styled "remittance man," second son of the Duke of Manchester. He admitted having a .38 calibre revolver. He said he had lent it to a friend who had lent it to a friend. Lord Edward was taken into custody. So were the other 14 adventurers, eight of them women.

At this point Mrs. Wanderwell came forward with the announcement that "a thousand people" might have wanted to kill her swashbuckling husband. She told of his recently fighting with a visitor at their apartment. She said she only knew the man as "Guy" but she produced a photograph of him. Day later police located a Welshman named William James Guy, 24, in a shack in the Los Angeles River bottoms. He admitted he "hated Wanderwell" because the Captain had once left him and his wife "on the beach" in Panama in the course of a Wanderwell tour. He also admitted illegal entry into the U. S., said he voted in the last election. But Suspect Guy denied killing Wanderwell. although he curiously paraphrased Mrs. Wanderwell's observation that many would have liked to kill him. An alibi supplied by several aviator friends, followed by his re-enactment of the stranger's visit to the Carma, convinced a coroner's jury that William Guy was not the man wanted. But both he and Lord Edward were detained for immigration authorities.

Mrs. Wanderwell insisted that she would lead the cruise to the South Seas as soon as police released the Carma from custody. Meantime, the 15 adventurers, confined to the boat, were charging 10-c- admission to all comers for a look at the cabin in which the murder took place.

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