SILENT SCHEMERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 280, 8 September 1936, Page 8

SILENT SCHEMERS.

STRANGE ATMOSPHERE. SOHO CAFE PATRONS. London’s amusement centre has become the grim home of tragedy; a shadowy veil of mystery hangs over Soho, writes Trevor Allen, well-known author and journalist. In November, last, Josephine Martin (“French Fifi”) was found there, strangled with a stocking. In April, Jeannette Cotton was strangled with a silken scarf. On May 9 Constance Hind was found dead —brutally murdered. Wire was drawn around her neck, but she may not have been strangled. In the background, whether connected or not with these outrages, is the murder of the whiteslaver Max Kassel, last January. Public horror has not risen to such a pitch since the days of Jack the Ripper. Are the sinister figures who have taken the lives of these unfortunate women still going about as usual? Here is a vivid picture of the Underworld strange folk with whom they may have associated.

Soho. . . . What does it mean to most people who flock into the West End at nights? Flashing sky-signs, roar of traffic, thronged pavements, restaurants with rose-shaded lights for dinner of supper, the French and Italian quarters with their delicatessen and patisserie shops, above all the theatres.

Underworld Headquarters, All rather un-English and a little quaint, but to all appearances harmless enough and certainly safe. In. the area bordered by Piccadilly Circus, Charing Cross road, and Oxford street, you meet no slouching apache; no Bill Sikes to sandbag you as you pass a dark court. And yet Soho to-day is the headquarters of the Underworld. Only a few yards from your theatre, your romantic restaurant, where it is so pleasant to linger over a cigarette and liquer, there is a cafe bar or a dingy basement “dive” which Underworld characters use as their meeting place, and where some of the biggest safecliacking, or smash-and-grab coupes have been planned. In the Bars and lounges and restaurants, and in the thronged streets, they “meet up” with their victims, Piccadilly Circus, Coventry street, Leicester square, and the Charing Cross road, they call “the Front,” and- they patrol it regularly in quest of clients drifting about at a loose end with money to spend. Most crooks to-day are confidence men. If the ,r are not specialists in that line they use it as a stop-gap between other jobs. Often they find it more lucrative than burgling, safecracking, or the smash-and-grab, and usually mu; i less risky. Suggestion of Tension. Off duty, they are to be found in these cafes or dives of the kind which have, a regular clientele and rarely attract the ordinary passer-by. Vliy this is so I have never been able to understand, for. except in the case of the dives, which are usually entered by an obscure door, they are the kind of place open to the street, which might appeal to anyone wanting a quick coffee and ham roll. There is nothing of the thieves’ den about these places. And yet. .... there is something on the minds of the men talking with you at your table, something in tire eyes which is not in the speech, a slight suggestion of tension which you do not sensei until you know them. Someone strolls across from another table, bends over, says a few cryptic, but seemingly commonplace words . in an undertone—brief, sufficient. That something in the eyes deepens, momentarily. A little later someone else strolls in and says: “The hand’s playing up the street, Freddie! Freddie nods and goes out with a cheierv “Be hack soon.” Perhaps he returns in a few minutes and then leaves with one or two more. Perhaps he is away an hour or two. When he comes hack he is preoccupied, rather quiet. While you have been sitting there he has been out in a fast tax? or car and done a job; done a quick “dance” into some luxury flat or house or shop in accordance with a prearranged plan.