◆ SpookStack

i 8 DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY us?” the underworld ask. “ What has happened to the protection paid for so lavishly??? These questions are flying around the underworld today, ‘This fear has taken such a hold upon them that in a panic they have resorted to wholesale murders in an endeavor to purge their ranks of the suspected rats. Even close pals, friends of years’ stand- ing, are under suspicion. The big-shots do not know where to go nor whom to trust. So now the underworld has run to cover, panic-stricken, Word has gone out that no matter what happens, ex- pense is to be disregarded; no matter who is sacrificed, these G-men must be stopped. “(It is reported that Dutch Schultz has been thrown to’ the Fed- erals as a sop—Ed.} The very life of the underworld is at stake. Their rackets are giving them millions of dol- lars every day. That flow of millions is in danger of being dried up. — nat HAT is the answer of the un-, derworld going to be? This is what it's going to be, and this magazine has it on good authority. Taking a leaf out of J. Edgar Hoover's notebook, the head of the bureau of investigation of the Depart- ment of Justice, the leaders of the un- derworld are trying frantically to save themselves by forming a secret organi- zation of their own, The underworld is going to attempt to defend its million-dollar rackets by an organization of secret agents who will not be drawn from the ranks of criminals, They will be presumably honest, patriotic young men who will be. hired to join the Department of Justice and every other police force where the: Ne can get them in, The answer to the Govern —the G-men—will be the spies—the “X-men.” «They: crooks themselves, but they: will be “paid by the crooks. They will be hired ” to'tip off the underworld on raids, and the identity of the Federal undercaye men who join the underworld to collec! the evidence that destroys it. The underworld will put their spies ~ in strategic positions, just as the Fed- eral government put their spies in stra- tegic positions before the March rsth taid. In war it is called counter-es-* pionage. This is a war between “ork and society. - : Afraid that even the man they select from within their own ranks to heat! such an organization might be a G-man, they dare not trust such an important. task to one of their own ilk. At a meeting held in a Mid-western - city recently and attended by several of: the more important leaders of the un- derworldy this i cussed. Bax. oy at ‘ees. : oe This.decided, their next step was to select the man to head the bureau. They finally settled on a man from Chty cago. This man had formerly fun a bureau of his own, and in times past had locked horns with some of the deni- zens of the underworld. He has since retired, The underworld knew of his: ] ‘personal integrity and professional re~ putation. He was just the man for the job, even if he did not belong to the underworld. Not doubting he would accept, they brought him to the’ co1 ference. “Your job,” they told him, “is to form a counter espionage service for. us, You are to ferret out the rats who are working among us. You will fur- we