Spies!

Among the shops and cafes that crowd the sidewalks of East 85th Street, Manhattan, the Little Casino Bar Restaurant at No. 206 was barely noticeable. Men & women came and went with a great air of having nothing to do but listen to the juke box playing soft German tunes. Richard Eichenlaub and his plump wife placidly drew beer, placidly dished out Wiener Schnitzel. One day early this week, Herr Eichenlaub suddenly disappeared.

In other parts of New York City and neighboring towns, other men & women, some of whom had been Herr Eichenlaub's customers, also suddenly disappeared. Their whereabouts was not a mystery long. They were in the clutches of the FBI. According to chief G-Man J. Edgar Hoover, they were spies--every jack & Jill.

At the end of Mr. Hoover's spectacular weekend pounce, 32 men & women were in jail. Among the captives, who looked like characters out of a Hitchcock thriller, were: a draftsman who had for several years inspected the Army's secret Norden bombsight; an engineer for the Sperry Gyroscope Co., which makes the bombsight and other vital instruments of war; a steward on a Pan American Clipper; a woman sculptress and playwright; a tool and die maker; Axel, the brother of Bund-ster James Wheeler-Hill; 63-year-old Frederick Joubert Duquesne, writer, lecturer and shadowy figure of World War I, said by Hoover to be head of the ring and a "professional spy"; Lilly Barbara Carola Stein, mop-haired artist's model, whose tiptoe trail zigzagged from Vienna to New York, through embassies and drawing rooms. "One of the most active, extensive and vicious groups we have ever had to deal with," Mr. Hoover declared.

Lilly Stein, half a dozen others promptly admitted their guilt.

Their sinister game, said G-Man Hoover, was snitching important national defense secrets and transmitting them to a "foreign power." Short-wave radio messages, courier service via Clipper planes, code messages in secret ink, intricate financing of conspiracies--they used them all. Their clearing house: the Little Casino Bar.

Proudly announcing the arrests, Mr.

Hoover said his sleuths had been on the trail for two years, called it the greatest spy roundup since World War I.

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