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Show I JIlW ' : L r M 'A M ; Pf'HlljlrPM J5P ' , Seventh Viscount H ' Downthe Secret A$- t . :l-M'UM 1 Passage the M ; ' ' Hall In the V M David Falcke and His Wife, Who H Posed as a Society Leader, Arriving H at Marlborough Police Station Af- Hi ter the Sensational Raid. LONDON. H I 'HE most historic homos in Loudon, H I including stately old mansions of B the nobility, with secret passages H and underground chambers dating back to B the romantic era when poniard and poison Hj cup flourished with lovo and murder in B circles of the gentry, to-day are being used as secret gambling clubs by British society. It Is a far cry from gallants in doublet. B and hoso to the sleek croupier of 1922 and H the modern Piccadilly "bounder," but the H sudden police raid on the town house of M Viscount Gahvay. one of Great Britain's H moft distinguished peers, has turned back R the pages of history two hundred years. H For in this hoary mansion, outwardly so respectable, agents from Scotland Yard unearthed an amazing situation. Chopping H down massive doors blackened and scarred H by time, they discovered a secret corridor paved with worn flagging and leading by a H tortuous spiral staircase to a subterranean H room, apparently a dungeon. H But here, where swashbuckling Jacobites H may have once plotted to place a Stuart H! king on England s throne, was the com- H plete equipment for a miniature Monte H Carlo Roulette wheels ami baccarat H1 tables in place of sword and dagpr; mm H and women feverishly watchiDg the epin B of a wheel Instead of nobles duelling bv H candlelight; upstairs, in lieu of wandering The Stately Bai minstrels, a jazz band to furnish the camouflage of a private dance this was the strange change time had wrought. The raid and Its remarkable re-markable revelation was as much of a surprise to the Viscount as it was to the police. George Edmund Mllnes Monckton-Arundell. C. B., seventh Viscount of Gal-wry, Gal-wry, former aide-de-camr to Queen Victoria, had owned his handsome Mayfair home for years without suspecting Its mysterious annex. Going to the Riviera for golf, he hud authorized his agents to lease the house for six months. A short time after the new tenants moved in- the police pot a tip from an Oxford undergraduate, under-graduate, who confessed to his shocked father, one of Viscount Gal way's best friends, that he. had thrown away his monthly allowance in a West Knd gambling house catering almost exclusively to outhful customers, many of them flappers of fifteen fif-teen That night two inspectors inspec-tors from Scotland Yard lingered in the shadow of the elm trees across the street from 48, Portland Port-land Place. In an area- way not a pebble's toss away six bobbies waited with nlghtslckfl and axes. It was after midnight before the curbstone curb-stone cluster of taxlcabs, plus one or two limousines and several snappy little racing rac-ing cars, told the detectives the time was ripe. A silent plpnal to the bluecoats and. bi fore any possible lookout could raise the alarm, the raiders had dashed across the street aud up the stone steps of Viscount Gaiway's stately mansion. Their progress waa barred by an iron portcullis tougli meat for police axes. Impatiently the chief Inspector rang a lonp P"al on the doorbell and hammered at the gate. Only silenco answered him until, from the shuttered second story, suddenly jingled the music of a jazz band. The next moment the double door creaked open, revealing re-vealing t he haughty face of a butler. Sleuths and bobbies bowled him over. Throueh a second door they sped, across the polished elegance of the main reception recep-tion hall and up the grand staircase, with Its golden balustrade, its step9 of Carrara marble and the Grecian urns on aach pillar. The scene that greeted them at the top was Innocence itself. A dozen or more couples pirouetted about the big ballroom in the latest variation of the fox trot. In one of the window seats, chatting animated, ani-mated, ?at a cutle not many years out of kindergarten and a lad whose chubby cheeks and Eton collar proclaimed his age or lack of it. Several "stags," none of them far from the fawn age, loafed against the wall, puffing precocious cigareit. And. mincing toward the intruders from the dlrecilon of the jazz orchestra, came an older man. whose face wore an 'expression 'expres-sion of polile but disapproving inquiry He was accompanied by a young woman in dazzling evening costume. Dancing master and chaperone they looked to a "T" For a moment the chief inspector was nonplussed But he had been told to expect ex-pect camouflage of this sort, and a quick glance when he first enterod had detected de-tected certain suspicious signs, not the least of which was the air of forced nonchalance non-chalance on the part of the "stags " Over the dignified protests of the "hosts" the raiders began a search. Nothing in the ballroom but palpitating flappers and their squires. Nothing in the rooms opening out from it but the fine old furniture, ancestral portraits, antiques an-tiques and heirlooms of Viscount Galway It was on one of the antiques that the chief inspector's eye finally rested and stopped a huge Chinese screen Ml painted in goll and crimson dragons, , y reaching from floor almost to tho Jry coiling at one end of the ballroom. prlsonment and Mrs. Brlsley was fined .300 or two months' imprisonment. But the sensation caused by the raid did not stop there. Falcke, by shouldering all responsibility for the gambling paraphernalia, parapher-nalia, secured the release of his tich young customers They were not even taken in charge by the officers, but in a gust of giggles, tears and anxtous predictions of what the next day would bring motored off into tho night Since then young Oxford and flapper Mayfair have been in a flurry of fear as gossip brought first one name and then another to parental ears. Meantime the raid set many wheels in motion Falcke was declared at his trial to be conducting not less than six such gambling houses in the West End; the prosecution charged him with being a member of an International syndicate that financed these gilded dens and, where reckless reck-less young bloods did not patronize them, catered particularly to wealthy Americnn tourists lured thither from as far away as Paris and Rome. In case after case, it was asserted, the vacant home of a peer had been leased, a number of them having the same sort of secret passages and cham-bera cham-bera as Viscount Gaiway's Kvcn now Scotland Yard is said to be planning a series of raids which may unearth, un-earth, in the halls where the Jacobites once toasted blithely the divine right of kings, feverish groups of men and vomen panting over roulette and - baccarat, while above them a blind I is furnished by the blare and bea' If of Jazz. I mm 'or the second time the inspector stepped behind it and examined the dark cozy corner it concealed. And for the first time, hidden behind a branching palm, he saw a door of black mahogany. "The key'" demanded the inspector. "That room Is ouo Viscount Galway left locked, we haven't the key," he was told. "Axes, men," was the inspector's answer an-swer to this. In a few seconds, under the splintering crash of the axes in the hands of the Blx tardy bobbiea, Viscount Gaiway's fine mahognnj door was in ruins. Beyond btretched blackness not a room at all. but a narrow passageway of atone flags that echoed hollowly under iho heels of the officers, just as it may have echoed two hundred years before to the boots of Stuart hotspurs. A second door, massive as the first, fell beneath tho axes and revealed a spiral staircase winding downward at the very back of tho house. Inspectors and bob bies wero not halfway In the descent when tho roar of a motor outsido announced an-nounced that tho birds had flown They had to content themselves with the nest. And a gilded nest they found it. Tho 6ecret staircase they discovered ended in a subterrauean chamber which, so old was the house, might have been built as a refuge for Royalist plotters in the early eighteenth century. Of the many changes the ancient mansion experienced in years of repairing and rebuilding, none was stranger Chan the ono that came to it when Viscount Galway decided to go pleasuring to the Riviera Baccarat tables, roulette wheels, poker chip3, shoes, rakes, decks of cards, ivory counters all the paraphernalia of a gambling gam-bling establishment as complete, on a minor scale, as the Deauville Casino offers were scattered about tho room One table was overturned. Chips were on the floor where they had fallen. Several bottles of champagne, a smashed wine glass and a girl's silver slippor at the foot of tho staircase testified to the hasty departure of the players. Besides the exit by tho secret staircase, a trapdoor in the floor of the chamber gave onto still another subterraneean corridor cor-ridor leading to the old-fashioned coachhouse coach-house in the back yard. If any oue had caped that wa to a waiting automobile, N ji , ' " They arrested "host" and "hostess." The 7 "'Zmr Jk I jb ' ."' -JowMiSrt&K former, David Falcke, was identified as 'tu SttmtL. "one of the most in v.f crate gam-ters and V .-'J&Stti f 'HH r" - ' y&Kfc, gaming house keepers in Loudon." Tho TwBBwIr v BBK& ' ". hitter. Mrs Marjory Beryl Brisley. fash- v jrf ' ' v'-lftiT ' jfrSN ionably gov. ifd and beautiful, had leased jSKjfis; . v fjay" agents by po.-ing as a society leader. S'ss. jsi ' N 'r"1 Falcke was .sentenced to six months' im- to-- I |