A House in Scarsdale

Shady characters are often involved in shady deals which get them into the press. And many a libel suit is brought against newspapers by shady characters hopeful of windfalls. So some big newspapers, like the New York Herald Tribune, have libel reporters. Virtually a private detective, a libel reporter has to be a good sleuth because his job is to penetrate the respectable disguises of shady characters and prove that they have not been maligned.

The Herald Tribune's, libel reporter is tense, grizzled, fun-loving Jay Racusin. Inquisitive Newsman Racusin, now 47, has been with the Herald Tribune since 1918. As a cub he was the first (and only) newspaperman to interview J. P. Morgan after World War I. Reporter Racusin (known as "Rack") gets plenty of other assignments that call for a passionate curiosity about the lives of his fellow men, a plain-clothes man's eye for significant details. Six weeks ago the Herald Tribune's lanky City Editor Lessing Engelking called Rack and gave him a special assignment. By last week it had turned into a first-class detective story, with complications that set the U. S. on its ear.

Nazi Agent. The job assigned Reporter Racusin was to investigate Gerhardt Alois Westrick, suave German lawyer who once represented many U. S. firms in Germany and who went to the U. S. last April in a new role (officially commercial counselor to the German Embassy), to preach Nazi trade propaganda to his U. S. business friends (TIME, July 3).

Rack went to the Waldorf-Astoria where Dr. Westrick had a three-room suite. There he discovered that Dr. Westrick rarely used it, kept it simply as an office in charge of a handsome young German woman, Baroness Irmingard von Wagenheim. So Rack tried to learn where most of Dr. Westrick's phone calls came from, found that they were coming from a telephone in Scarsdale, N. Y. Up went Rack to suburban Scarsdale and did some more undercover work.

He took down license numbers of cars that called at the house where Dr. Westrick lived with his wife and children, looked up their owners, bit by bit pieced together Dr. Westrick's movements--and incidentally a lot of miscellaneous information about Dr. Westrick's guests. One day last week the Herald Tribune broke Rack's story. According to Sleuth Racusin, since May Dr. Westrick had:

P:Taken pains to conceal his identity from his neighbors in Scarsdale, and on some occasions had used the name of Webster.

P:Entertained for such friends and business associates as Captain Torkild Rieber, chairman of Texas Corp.

P:Temporarily borrowed a car from Texas Corp., and applied for a driver's license, giving a Texas Corp. engineer as his employer, and denying that he had any physical disability although he had "lost one of his legs in the World War."

P:Been visited by a succession of unexplained men, including officials of Underwood Elliott Fisher Co., an employe of an ironworks in Buffalo, a young German who works for Eastman Kodak Co.

Sign of the G. Mystified was Reporter Racusin by an enigmatic white placard bearing the letter G which hung at intervals from a window in Dr. Westrick's house. Early-morning editions of the Herald Tribune that day ran a picture of the house (see cut) with a white circle around the placard and a close-up showing the G enlarged. In later editions the close-up disappeared (along with Newsman Racusin's references to it), but the circle remained. In final editions the circle too was gone.

Probable reason was given by Ace Reporter George Dixon of the New York Daily News. Wrote Satirist Dixon: "Phantom-like men in white have been responding by day and night to mysterious signaling from a secluded Westchester mansion--now disclosed as the secret quarters of Dr. Gerhardt Alois Westrick. . . . Invariably they carry carefully wrapped packages. . . . They salute with all the precision of storm troopers, deliver the packages, salute again--and silently depart. . . . Super-sleuthing finally solved the mystery just before last midnight. Jerome Glasser, treasurer of a large corporation, revealed that ... his company has been doing business with the Nazi household. 'That sign,' said Glasser, ' . . . can mean only one thing--somebody wants a Good Humor.' "*

So What? Reporter Racusin provided no real evidence that Nazi Westrick was a conspirator, probably for the reason that he isn't--his object is not small time spying but big-time propaganda among U. S. businessmen. But the "revelations" proved highly embarrassing for a number of people. One of those embarrassed was Captain Rieber, who had made the mistake of doing small favors for a Nazi propagandist who was an old friend. He saw the press in a hurry and declared that he did not like the idea of dictatorships, but that his company was in the oil business, not in diplomacy or politics.

Dr. Westrick, who had made the mistake of trying to conceal his identity and whereabouts (apparently for the honest reason that he was harassed by telephone calls from angry anti-Nazis), hurried to Manhattan's motor vehicle bureau (in a taxi) to explain his license applications. He denied that he had lost a leg in World War I, admitted he had lost a foot. He denied that he had told a falsehood in naming an engineer of Texas Corp. (his client) as his employer, but admitted he had failed to notify the bureau when he moved to Scarsdale. He also tried belatedly to claim diplomatic immunity. His driver's license was revoked but he managed to have his car registration transferred to his wife.

Said Harold A. Callan, Manhattan lawyer who leased the Scarsdale house to Dr. Westrick: "I have asked the Westricks to leave my home as soon as possible. . . . If I had known that he ... was representing the German Government, I would not have closed the deal. ..."

Lawyer Callan happens to work for the firm of Shearman & Sterling, one of whose clients is Captain Rieber's Texas Corp. At week's end, Dr. Westrick packed his trunks without haste, made ready to move out of Lawyer Callan's house "as soon as possible." Next week, on Aug. 12, his three-months lease expires.

*Brand name of ice cream on a stick peddled by white-uniformed salesmen throughout the U. S.

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