"Art Gallery Mystery"

Tops in both prestige and sales from 1883 to 1939 was the American Art Association-Anderson Galleries, which auctioned over $160,000,000 worth of art. Every big U. S. art fancier knew its dignified building on Manhattan's esthetic 57th Street, its shrewdly-lit, velvet-draped auction stage. But spooks lurked behind that arras. Last summer the American Art Association-Anderson Galleries folded up for nonpayment of debts (TIME, Aug. 21). Last week its two partners gave Manhattan its best mystery story since Drug Dealer Frank Donald Coster (TIME. Dec. 19, 1938, et seq.). Tabloids christened it "The Art Gallery Mystery."

In Bellevue Hospital lay Partner Milton B. Logan, his skull fractured by a blow with a lead-filled iron pipe. In a Brooklyn grave lay Partner John T. Geery, a bullet hole blown in his brain. In jail without bail sat Newsdealer John Poggi, charged with using the lead pipe on Logan at Geery's instigation.

Sad-eyed Milton Logan grew up in Brooklyn, became successively a lunch wagon manager, a janitor, a hotel clerk, superintendent of an apartment house owned by wealthy, impulsive Cortlandt Field Bishop, in whose favor he quickly rose. Realty-man Bishop was also an art collector. In 1923 he bought the American Art Association for $500,000, later got its chief Manhattan (and U. S.) rival, the Anderson Galleries, for another $500,000. In October 1929 he merged them.

The art business went to hell in the Depression. But Collector Bishop was rich enough to stand the Galleries' losses, ready enough to leave its conduct to President Hiram Parke and Vice President Otto Bernet. When he died in 1935, sales were picking up again. But two years later his beneficiaries, Widow Amy Bend Bishop and Friend-Secretary Edith Nixon, set up a new regime and made Employe Logan, who stood high in their graces, secretary-treasurer. Hiram Parke and Otto Bernet resigned. Most of the Galleries' experts, auctioneers and appraisers resigned with them.

Early in 1938, there turned up at the Galleries a bustling insurance solicitor named John Geery, who had gone to Sunday school with Logan in Brooklyn. They had not seen each other for 20 years. John Geery liked the look of the business and had a little money to invest. Soon the Sunday school chums were partners. Rank art amateurs both--but both good salesmen--they persuaded Widow Bishop and Edith Nixon to sell out to them for a mere $175,000. Geery made the down payment of $10,000, became secretary-treasurer. Logan paid nothing, became president. Most of the remaining experts left.

The 1938-39 season was disastrous. Cream of the auction crop went to the new galleries which Hiram Parke and Otto Bernet had started around the corner. With a big overhead, Logan and Geery staggered along on what Geery could raise and borrow -- and allegedly by appropriating clients' money.

Last spring Partner Geery found one Gustav Eckelmann, former U-boat commander and self-styled "personal adviser" to Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Adventurer Eckelmann promised that Chiang would send $30,000,000 worth of Chinese art treasures to Manhattan in July, sell them to raise money for arms. Wise in the ways of insurance, Entrepreneur Geery decided to run no risk of his partner's dying and disrupting the sale. He took out $150,000 worth of short-term policies on Logan's life, but did not tell Logan about it. The Chinese art never arrived. Six days before the insurance expired, the Galleries filed a bankruptcy petition, but month by month Geery kept renewing the policies. The catch: he could collect only if he could prove business loss. Last August New York City's Commissioner of Licenses Paul Moss suspended the Galleries' auction license. Milton Logan and John Geery were indicted for grand larceny. Chief creditor was Baron Felix Lachovski of Paris. The Galleries had sold his Raphael Madonna of the Pinks for $60,000, sent him only $20,000.

Last week the insurance on Milton Logan's life was still valid when Partners Logan and Geery met to confer on the larceny indictment with Attorney Herbert Plaut in a Wall Street restaurant. At 5:45 Lawyer Plaut left. At 6:45 Insuranceman Geery met his wife at the Waldorf-Astoria for a quiet 21st-wedding-anniversary dinner. He had blood on his face, an amazing tale to tell. He and Logan, said he, had gone for a drive to see a real-estate agent. Attacked en route by a mysterious stranger, they had made separate escapes. When the Geerys got to their Garden City, L. I. home at 9:30, the police had phoned. A radio car had picked up Logan, dazed and bloody, on East River Drive. The detectives wanted a chat with Insuranceman Geery. Twenty minutes later Geery went down to the cellar to "look at the furnace," put a revolver in his mouth, pulled the trigger. On a nearby box he left a typewritten letter begun last April, added to from time to time since. Its penciled postscript: "This is the limit. I have lived in hell since May through some one else's deception."

Milton Logan told a different story: Geery had asked him to go for a drive, led him to a car with a burly stranger in its back seat. The stranger had smashed in the back of his skull with a weighted iron pipe, pushed him half-conscious out of the moving car. But Logan had noticed the car's license number. It was soon traced to Newsdealer John ("Red") Poggi, whose stand is outside the Equitable Building on lower Broadway, where John Geery had his office. When Poggi was haled to Bellevue's surgical ward, Logan promptly identified him as the thug. "What, who, me?" snorted Poggi. "He's crazy as a bedbug."

Police found a bloodstained piece of pipe on East River Drive, blood on the upholstery of Poggi's car. Analyzed, both bloods proved the same type as Art Dealer Logan's. Poggi presently admitted that the pipe was one he kept in his car, used to tap crabs into submission on fishing trips. Vigorously he denied having done any head-tapping with it. Wall Street brokers began boasting of knowing Poggi; one said proudly: "He called me 'Little Mac.'"

At week's end, Milton Logan was doing better, but still had his indictment for larceny to face if he recovered. The Parke-Bernet Galleries was doing better still. Last October it made a triumphal return to the American Art Association-Anderson Galleries' vacated building, has since put under the hammer more than $1,600,000 worth of art.

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