Young Wizard

Since the 16th century, when Sir John Baker was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Commons, Peter Baker's ancestors have been men of substance and probity. Peter Baker set out to be something more dashing. When World War II came, Peter was only 18, stubby, shortsighted, and thoroughly unmilitary in appearance. But he had dreams of grandeur, and courage to match. He enlisted in the army, got himself assigned to the most hair-raising jobs in warfare-dropping behind enemy lines in The Netherlands for sabotage and espionage, working in enemy territory with resistance groups. He was twice captured by the Gestapo, twice escaped. At war's end he emerged a captain with a Military Cross.

After the war he confided to friends that he was a 20th century Shakespeare, and whipped out two slim volumes of verse and a treatise on modern political theory. Then, with the same confident air, he turned to finance. In three years he established three publishing firms, and an investment company. He had no trouble raising money. Was he not the son of Major Reginald Baker, well known as a cinema magnate and managing director of Baling Studios? Wealthy Sir Bernard Docker and Sir John Mann contributed financial backing, Viscount Astor and Major Henry Legge-Bourke, M.P., were glad to serve on his board of directors. Soon Peter had 18 companies, ranging from Edinburgh to London.

Madman & Comer. Peter enjoyed the role of eccentric young man-about-Mayfair. He entertained lavishly, kept tables permanently reserved at the West End's swankest nightclubs. When one of his companies tottered, Peter shifted money dexterously from another, started a new one, or found new money from his faithful backers. Nobody at first seemed to notice that none of his companies made money.

Next, he plunged into politics. In South Norfolk the Conservatives picked him (war hero, old Norfolk family) as a candidate, and he promptly astounded politicians by defeating Laborite Christopher Mayhew, then Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs. In Parliament Captain Baker was marked a comer.

But last year banks began to balk. When they did, Peter suddenly produced "bills of exchange'' (drafts) apparently guaranteed, by such sterling-solid men as Docker and Mann. When one bank refused to give him further loans, he would "cash" another bill of exchange with another bank and repay the loan at the first. Last spring his respectable backers had enough. They resigned from the boards, refused him further financing. In June, his companies crashing around him, Peter abruptly put himself into a private sanatorium where no visitors were allowed. But one visitor got through anyway: Chief Detective Superintendent Robert Stevens of Scotland Yard's Fraud Squad, who arrested Baker for "uttering forged documents." Baker, it turned out, had forged the signatures of Docker and Mann to the bills of exchange. The forgeries had cost banks $250,000. In all, the debts of Peter's companies totaled $1,800,000. In addition, his father had expended much of the family fortune, trying to save his son.

Hypomania. In the dock at Old Bailey last week. Captain Peter Baker, M.P., war hero, audacious financier and poet, heard himself described by a psychiatrist as suffering from "hypomania," a -L-5 word for big-shot complex. He pleaded guilty to six of seven charges against him, then, squinting through his horn-rimmed glasses, stood at soldierly attention as he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

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