"Lunatic at Large"

When rich, wanderlusty His Highness the Maharaja of Tripura, Sir Bir Bikram Kishore Deb decided to see the world, he instructed Thos. Cook & Son's sniffy "Princes' Department" to assign him its No. 1 courier, big, beefy, 60-year-old Frederick Norbert Wagner. Last June the Maharaja, his entourage of eight, and 58 pieces of luggage arrived in Marseille, France. There, on his toes as usual, Courier Wagner firmly took command.

Last week Courier Wagner herded his dusky charges into Washington's swank Mayflower Hotel. Few days later His Highness paid President Roosevelt a visit, his companions went rubbernecking about the Capital. But nobody checked in or out without notifying Courier Wagner. Between times he lolled in his suite, happily bibbing a double martini cradled in shaved ice.

For Frederick Norbert Wagner this was no novel assignment. Maharajas are his dish. Man and boy he had circled the globe 17 times with them, never flubbed a ticklish problem (even when His Highness the Nawab of Rampur toted his own kitchen and cooks, or the late Gaekwar of Baroda handed him keys for 468 pieces of luggage, weighing 17 tons).

Son of a Swiss chemist, Frederick Norbert Wagner contracted travelers' itch "while my shirtwaist and trousers were still one piece." At 17 he shipped to the U. S. After clerking for a shipping line, he landed a job in Cook's London office. The World War found him skittering about as a British Intelligencer, an experience which brought him many a fruitful contact ("I know all the little back doors").

Meantime, the Cooks, who dearly loved royalty, had organized their Princes' Department, agreed that backdoor-wise Wagner was the man to handle footloose Maharajas. His duties: booking hotel suites, dispensing funds (Maharajas rarely carry a cent in their pantaloons), shooing away swindlers, for whom he has a keen nose.

Particularly proud of his medical knowledge is Courier Wagner, who has safaried with many a big game expedition through Africa without a single case of malaria or sleeping sickness. Three clients, however, were fanged by poisonous snakes. Courier Wagner brought them around by sucking their wounds, dusting them with permanganate crystals and pickling the victims in Scotch & sodas (usually a bad idea).

Courier Wagner's longest tour of duty was 9 1/2 months on Copper Tycoon Daniel Cowan Jackling's yacht. His most capricious clients are Englishmen. One hired him for a trip to the world's coldest spot. He picked Yakutsk, Siberia. From a U. S. millionaire with a Napoleonic complex came his goofiest assignment: a tour of every Napoleonic landmark in Europe. They started in Corsica, wound up six months later on Elba.

Less whimsical, but equally sticktuitive are his present clients, who will keep him busy till November. Courier Wagner will then be free to join his wife in London, whence they will repair to Switzerland on their annual winter holiday.

One fine day he aims to write his memoirs. The title: Lunatic at Large.

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