"Seaburysickness"

One sultry summer night in 1912 a Manhattan gambler named Herman Rosenthal was shot down before the Hotel Metropole. For that murder four gunmen and a police lieutenant went to the electric chair. An indignant city began an investigation of police-protected vice which eventually put District Attorney Charles Whitman in the Governor's chair. Swirled up from the nether depths by this inquiry was a plump little 40-year-old German named David Maier. He had been a brothel keeper. During the investigation he had offered a hostile witness $50 to pervert his testimony. In March 1914, David Maier went to trial for bribery. On the witness stand he was asked and answered these questions:

Q. -- You have been in the disorderly house business how many years?

A. -- Twelve or 14.

Q. -- And you were convicted of running a disorderly house?

A. -- I was.

Q. -- What was your sentence?

A. -- I was fined $150.

A jury convicted David Maier on the bribery charge. He was sent to Sing Sing where he served two and one-half years.

Last week the Legislative Committee under Samuel Seabury investigating Tam many Town wanted to question ex-Convict Maier, now grown rich and politically important as a manipulator of German votes. What did David Maier know about an evil-smelling city pier lease? But the onetime brothel keeper was not to be found until the hawk-eyed press spotted him 4,000 mi. away -- junketing around Europe with no less a person than Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker (TIME, Sept. 7).

Seabury investigators discovered that David Maier had sailed on the Bremen with the Mayor last month, had occupied an A deck cabin close to his. They also found that he had been given free passage, presumably for booking the Walker party on a German line. The Mayor's passage had been paid for, apparently, but not by the Mayor so far as accountants could find.

When Mayor Walker reached Paris last week and took a suite at the Hotel Crillon, correspondents nocked in to ask him about his travelling companion. Unabashed, the Mayor declared: "Dave Maier is a true friend of mine. There's the little Dutchman. Get a good look at him."

Maier stepped up beside the Mayor for inspection. Continued Mayor Walker: "He organized the Steuben Society and is president of it.* A million people in my town have honored him on more than one occasion and think that he's a distinguished citizen. I'm not disowning him as a friend because the Seabury committee is after him. I never go back on my friends."

Ex-Convict and onetime Brothelman Maier then explained that it was just a "coincidence" that he sailed on the Bremen with the Mayor, that he was going to Germany for sciatica treatments, that he had joined the Walker party ("I paid all my own expenses") at the Mayor's request because he could speak German. Within 24 hours after the interview, however, "True Friend" Maier disappeared from Paris, presumably to take his sciatica to Berlin.

Meanwhile Mayor Walker continued his round of gaiety in Paris. He dedicated a New York City War memorial. He addressed American clubs. He was entertained by Ambassador Edge. And one day as he was lolling in his hotel bedroom an agent of the French Foreign Office arrived unexpectedly and decorated him with the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honor. Mayor Walker was, for the first time in his life, struck dumb. This unprecedented honor was genuinely unexpected. Champagne was ordered and he regained his speech. Next day he went to call on President Doumer "to pay my respects to my chief personally." His tentative departure for the U. S. was set for Sept. 16, before which he will visit London./- Said he: "I'm feeling no better than when I left New York and this isn't 'Seaburysickness' either."

In France. Mayor Walker's Legion of Honor decoration was explained on the ground that the Foreign Office had got it into its head that the Democratic party would nominate him for the Presidency next year. In New York, however, Seabury investigators began looking for a more realistic reason. They found that last year Mayor Walker put through the municipal government a resolution remitting $415,499 in back taxes for seven years to a French government subsidiary which in 1918 had purchased 19 acres on Newt own creek for war munition storage. This tax remission opened the way to a profitable sale of the land by France.

* This the 'Steuben Society in Manhattan denied.

P:Last week Betty Compton, musicomedy actress and good friend of Mayor Walker's, left the cast of Fifty Million Frenchmen at Glasgow, went to Harrogate, 200 mi. from London.

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