Mrs. O'Brien Says a Prayer

Mrs. Catherine O'Brien, sixtyish, has been a good Catholic all her life. One day last week she was making the beds in a room at the New York Athletic Club, where she has worked for 40 years, when two frozen-faced young men came softly in behind her and demanded her keys. They wanted to get in Room No. 1903, across the hall, they whispered. When Mrs. O'Brien asked why, one of the soft-snarling men stuck a revolver against her apron. Mrs. O'Brien put her hand in her apron pocket where she kept her key ring --and a crucifix. She clutched the crucifix and uttered a silent, urgent prayer. Then she swung her fist to the gunman's jaw.

Over he went like a hard-hit tenpin. He scrambled up again, clubbed Mrs. O'Brien with his gun. That was the last she remembered. When she came to, her assailants had gone. She grabbed the telephone, screamed: "Help--police--holdup men!"

A switchboard operator halted the elevators. A bellhop dashed out to the street, grabbed Policemen Schuck and Klika, who covered the club's exits. Schuck was near the service door when three bandits came charging down the stairs. He opened fire, they fired back; Schuck toppled over with a bullet in his leg. The gunmen scattered. One commandeered the car of Mrs. Samuel Solomon, who was on her way to a corset shop, lunged into Manhattan's heavy crosstown traffic. Klika, charging after him, jumped on the running board. Just as he did, the gunman put his gun to his head and shot himself. He was identified as Lyman Finnell, ex-convict and parole violator. Several blocks away another of the thugs was run to ground in a taxi. He was one Joseph Kress, a young man with an old record. Desperado No. 3 escaped.

Police could guess what the trio had been after at the N.Y.A.C. Room 1903 was one of a suite occupied by Frank Erickson, reputed to be New York's wealthiest bookmaker, said by Mayor LaGuardia to be a "bum." A zipper bag which the gunmen had left behind them held black masks, wire, cord, wads of cotton--elaborate paraphernalia for a holdup.

Mrs. O'Brien, head patched, shaken but still jaunty, was perfectly willing to recount her adventure. Said she: "I said to myself . . . 'Oh, God, give me strength. . . .' Then I hit him a bat on the side of the jaw and he went , . . sprawling."

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