Show feo k 4 siw ADVENTURERS' ADVENTURERS CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE Play P U PIa Fiddle Play By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter HELLO everybody Strike up the band here comes come a bands bandsman man man Frank Frank Zell of Chicago You know they say that Nero fiddled while Rome was burning but burning but Frank Zell went him one better Frank kept a whole doggone orchestra I going while while but but wait a minute Lets Let's not spoil the story This yarn takes us back to the boom year of 1929 when everybody was throwing parties At that time Frank was a student at the University University sity of Illinois and he had organized a dance band composed of boys boy from the university The Illinois Army-Illinois football game was played at Champaign that year and a prominent citizen of the town had issued in invitations to a flock of this chis friends to attend a ball which was to be held in his home after the game Frank was engaged to furnish the music for the party Dinner was served after the game and a reception followed that so the dancing didn't get started until around half past ten A platform had been set up for the orchestra in the big ballroom on the third floor and the boys played for about half an hour First They Thought It Was a Joke And then all of a sudden there came sounds of shooting on the lower floors I The crackle of gunfire in the midst of a party was strange enough I but stranger still few of the guests paid any attention to it The host was a man known for a certain flair for doing the unexpected to lend le do zest to his parties If this were just another stunt to give the assembled folks a thrill- thrill well well well-no no one wanted to be fooled by It The orchestra played and the dance went on It went on for two or three minutes Then suddenly four masked men carrying pistols and shotguns burst into the ballroom 1 One of the thugs shouted Put em cm up This is a holdup There was a momentary confusion in the room The orchestra stopped playing Still no one seemed to be able to decide whether this was a joke or not But as the bandits began pushing the guests around lining them up against a wall it became apparent that this was no joke but grim reality Up on the platform in m full view of the gangsters with their guns Frank began to get that uneasy feeling He felt like a clay pigeon just shot out of the trap He had in his is pocket and he slipped it out and andI I l if v 1 lw 1 I Hu ALiF I II I Just as Nero fiddled when Rome burned I managed to ditch it behind one of the wings that flanked the platform Then TheD the confusion conf sion of ot the moment over Frank led his band into a series of dance tunes that would take about fifteen minutes to play pla And the Band Just Played On So just as Nero fiddled while Rome burned Frank led a whole or or- orchestra orchestra orchestra chestra into a flock of lively music while all around him the guests of his employer were being robbed But he didn't do it nonchalantly as I Nero did As a matter of fact Frank was feeling anything but non non- But it gave him and his boys something to do besides sit sitI I around and feel helpless and on top of that Frank had an idea I The idea was that a holdup of that sort couldn't go unnoticed long I Somewhere in the big house with many telephones and swarming with servants some one must have put a call through to the police And Frank figured that if his band played those crooks might lose track of the time tima and be delayed a bit So the band played Meanwhile l the boys in the orchestra were just as nervous as ashe ashe ashe he was Those crooks might not like the music and take a notion to start shooting Frank looked at the piano player noticed that he was playing with only one hand and asked him why Cant use the other one th too the piano player shot back Its paralyzed I But the thugs didn't seem to mind music and his boys were get get- getting getting I ting more confident The saxophone player slipped off of his wrist watch and dropped it into his instrument where it was concealed so thoroughly that he had to pay the next day to have the sax taken apart They played through the whole number Dumber and the thugs far from objecting seemed to like it When they stopped one of them pointed his hisgun hisgun gun at the platform and uttered one word u Mu And Frank says The nose of that shotgun looked like the muzzle of a one I can assure you that we played The bandits lulled by the music were going about their work in ina a leisurely fashion They seemed to be in a good mood and no one was I shot during the affair They finished their work and started to leave Then Came the Police Shooting I As they were going down the stairs they met a single policeman coming up The cop like the guests first thought it was a staged joke He said All right boys the shows show's over Lets Let's have your gun And the first bandit dumfounded handed over his revolver without a murmur But Bot at that moment a whole squad of police burst in the front I door A second bandit whipped up a shotgun and fired wounding a captain in the thumb At At almost the same moment the cap cap- captain captain captain tain let go with a n 45 and the bandit tumbled down the stairs i He lie landed at the bottom at the feet of some guests who had Just justI I arrived and there he lay in a pool of his own blood a cynical smile on onI I his face while the cops looked him over to see sec how badly he was hurt He died the next Dext day at Mercy hospital in Urbana Two of the thugs escaped but they were caught a few days later y i When the cops had gone that night after the holdup the hosts host's mother I came over to Frank handed him 20 and told him it was heroic of him himI to lead his band under such harrowing circumstances And says I Frank I blushed when I took it If U she could have only known it It I could have played all night night after after taking one look down the barrel of ot that shotgun e e C s Service I |