Part 22

The news of Ling’s arrest reached Chu in Hong Kong. He was appalled that he was being used as a tool in the smuggling of narcotics. He wrote a frantic note to Lieutenants Warren and Davis, urging them to destroy the two suitcases as soon as they arrived, in order to avoid trouble. He apologized to them for causing them any embarrassment or trouble.

And then he wrote a letter to Seaman Leslie Brown. He mailed one copy to Honolulu and another copy to Brown’s home in Los Angeles. He said:

Dear Leslie:

I hope this letter will catch you up in Honolulu or Los Angeles. If in San Francisco too late. I want to tell you about the story of the suitcase. It is a very dangerous thing. Please do not take it back to your house. Please keep it board ship and return it to me in Hong Kong, otherwise you will have big troubles. If you already took them home, and have no trouble, please keep it. If some Chinese people try to get it, please do not let any people have it. The best thing is to return to Hong Kong. It is a very dangerous suitcase. Be careful of yourself. You have family and I also have family. I don’t want you and me to have troubles.

I am very sorry for everything. Please take my word. Please return me a mail. I am looking forward to hearing from you in the very very soonest.

Sincerely yours, _Chu_

The letter was waiting for Brown when the _President Cleveland_ arrived at Honolulu. Again he examined the suitcase closely, and everything that was in it. But he could find nothing that was suspicious. He decided that the best thing to do was to keep the case in his cabin and to take it back to Hong Kong on his next trip.

Brown wrote to Chu, saying:

Dear Chu:

Received your letter in Honolulu. Was quite surprised and hurt to know you put me in such a spot after I asked you if there was anything in the suitcase. We arrive in San Francisco today. I have the suitcase on the ship and will return it to you next trip when I come. That is if nothing happens to me. I have spent every night since then worrying about the spot you put me on.

Well, I will close for now. Hope you write and that your children are well.

Sincerely yours, _Leslie Brown_

When the _President Cleveland_ reached Los Angeles, Brown left the suitcase in his cabin and hurried ashore to his apartment. He was told that a Mr. Lee, a Chinese, had made several calls inquiring about his return. And within a few minutes after his arrival, there was a knock on his door. Brown opened the door and found that his caller was a Chinese about fifty-five or sixty years of age. He had thin, sharp features and a dark complexion. His hair was turning gray. He was wearing a brown suit and a topcoat.

“I am Mr. Chu’s relative, Mr. Lee,” the visitor said. He asked if Brown had brought the suitcase from Mr. Chu.

“I can’t give it to you,” Brown said. “I got a letter from Chu and he told me to hang on to that suitcase or I’d get in trouble.”

Lee angrily accused Brown of trying to keep the suitcase in order to sell it. He demanded to know where it was.

To prove he still had it as he claimed, Brown took Lee with him aboard the _Cleveland_ and showed him the suitcase in his cabin. But he refused to give it to him. Brown had the bag in his cabin when the _President Cleveland_ sailed from Los Angeles on the return trip to Hong Kong.

The U.S. Customs agents in San Francisco and Los Angeles were informed by the Customs representative in Tokyo of the developments at that end of the line. By this time they had learned that Brown was involved in the smuggling operation and that he was to make delivery to a Chinese known only as Mr. Lee. But the message from Tokyo arrived after the _Cleveland_ had put to sea.

When the _Cleveland_ arrived in Yokohama, Treasury agents in Japan boarded the vessel and asked Brown if he still had the suitcase which had been given to him by the Chinese in Hong Kong. Brown said, “Yes. I know which one you are talking about.” He took them to his cabin and showed them the case. “I have looked it over,” he said, “and I can’t find anything wrong.”

A customs agent went over the suitcase carefully, discovered the false bottom, pried out the piece of plywood, and uncovered the cache of heroin. It was estimated to be worth $500,000 at retail prices.

Brown agreed to work with Customs agents when he returned to the United States and to help trap the Chinese who had called on him for the narcotics. The narcotics were turned over to the ship’s captain and Brown was confined to the ship. When the vessel docked in San Francisco the heroin was turned over to Customs agents. Brown was taken in tow by Customs Agent Paul Samaduroff, a blond-haired, broad-shouldered man who had specialized in tracking down West Coast narcotics smugglers.

Samaduroff and other agents in San Francisco suspected that the “Mr. Lee” who had called on Brown in Los Angeles was actually Li Sheung, also known as Shin Lee. He fitted the description which Brown had given the agents when he was questioned in Japan. Li had been on the agents’ wanted list for months--but they had never been able to trap him while he was buying or selling narcotics. Now the chance had come.

The agents placed fake packages of heroin in the false bottom of the suitcase and went with Brown to the bus depot, where the bag was checked in a locker. Then Brown was taken to a telephone, where he placed a call to Li Sheung’s hangout at a shirt shop on Grand Avenue in Chinatown. The shop owner answered the phone and Brown asked if he could talk to Li Sheung. The shop owner said, “You call later, and I’ll see if I can contact him.”

Several times Brown called the shirt shop only to be told to call again. Late that evening the contact was made. A man who identified himself as Li Sheung got on the phone and talked to Brown. Brown identified himself as a seaman aboard the _President Cleveland_ and said he had something which he was supposed to deliver to Li Sheung.

“Yes,” Li said, “I remember you in Los Angeles. Why didn’t you give me the suitcase when I was in Los Angeles?”

Brown said that he would explain the whole thing to him when they met. He added, “I have the suitcase here now and I’m supposed to give it to you.”

They agreed to meet in a restaurant in Chinatown. Li Sheung was waiting for Brown when he arrived at the restaurant. Customs agents had placed themselves at strategic points outside the restaurant, and one was seated at a table in the rear of the room when the two men sat down together.

Li Sheung kept referring to the fact that Brown would not give him the suitcase in Los Angeles. He said he could not understand why the delivery had not been made.

Brown said, “That time you came to my house, I thought there was something hidden in the suitcase but I didn’t know what it was. Now I know, and I want some money for my trouble.”

Li Sheung agreed to go with Brown to the bus station to pick up the heroin and to pay him $100. They left the restaurant and got into a cab.

Customs agents, keeping contact with each other by radio, trailed the cab from the restaurant to the bus station, where other agents waited, lounging about the place as though they were travellers. They were watching as Brown went to a baggage locker, took out the bag, and handed it to Li Sheung. The Chinese then counted out $100 and handed it to the seaman. At this point Samaduroff and the other agents moved in and arrested Li Sheung. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

And Mr. Chu--the amiable, friendly little man in Hong Kong? The British were lenient with him because he was, after all, only the dupe, and he had cooperated in rounding up the smuggling gang. By now, he may have returned to his old job of being helpful to touring Americans.

The Customs files are fat with such cases, in which smuggling rings and individual smugglers have used innocent victims to help them bring jewels, heroin, watch parts, and other small but valuable items into the United States.

One of the innocents in such a plot was dark-eyed, attractive Countess Kyra Kapnist, who arrived in the United States aboard the SS _Champlain_ on September 2, 1937, to join the exclusive fashion house of Marcel Rochas, Inc., of New York City as a model and saleswoman.

Before she left Paris, an official of the firm had informed her that two trunks and a hat box would be added to her baggage when it was delivered to the liner. It was nothing she was to worry about. She would be met on the pier in New York by Mr. Guy Fonte-Joyeuse, vice president of the firm and manager of its New York branch. He would take care of her customs declaration and the baggage inspection. All the countess had to do was to be her charming self and not worry her pretty head about such small details.

And so the countess arrived in New York. On the pier, she was met by Fonte-Joyeuse, a distinguished-looking man accompanied by a fashionably dressed woman. Everything seemed to go as she had been told it would in Paris. Fonte-Joyeuse was extremely solicitous about his new employee. “Give me your customs declaration,” he said, “and I’ll take care of everything.”

He hurried away to find an inspector to examine her baggage. Within a matter of minutes an inspector appeared and peeked into one piece of the countess’ luggage. Then he stamped all the baggage for clearance and the countess was whisked from the pier with her friends. Fonte-Joyeuse seemed unduly elated over her arrival.

Fonte-Joyeuse would not have been so happy had he known that a member of his own firm was an informer for the U.S. Customs Service--and that a letter was even then on its way to the Service advising them that Countess Kapnist’s luggage included two trunks and a hat box containing seventy original gowns and hats valued at approximately $40,000.

Agents opened an investigation and found that Countess Kapnist’s declaration made no mention of dutiable imports. They questioned the inspector who had handled the examination and found that--for a price--he had agreed to feign an examination of trunks and luggage brought into the country by the models and employees designated by Fonte-Joyeuse.

When agents confronted the countess, she willingly told them the whole story. She told them of the instructions given her in Paris, of being met by Fonte-Joyeuse on the pier in New York, and of her surprise when an inspector took the trouble to look at only one small suitcase among all the luggage which she carried with her.

Agents found in the house of Marcel Rochas 104 gowns of French origin, valued at about $60,000, which had been smuggled into the United States by models and others employed by the firm.

Fonte-Joyeuse was indicted on two charges of smuggling and conspiracy. He was sentenced to one year and a day in prison and fined $1,000. He served six months of his sentence and then was released on parole and deported to France. The Parisian fashions seized from the house of Marcel Rochas were sold at auction. They brought about $9,000 into the U.S. Treasury--of which $2,250 was paid to the Paris informer.

18

THE STORMY WORLD OF ART

The Korean War was still raging in April, 1951, when Sgt. Elverne Giltner left the American Army’s Tenth Corps Headquarters for a stroll about the war-battered streets of Seoul. Four times in less than one year fighting had washed through the city as the United Nations forces battled the North Korean and Chinese Communist troops across the mountains and through the valleys of this unhappy land. Sergeant Giltner was only one of thousands of American soldiers in Seoul at this time.

Like most Americans overseas, the sergeant was a collector of souvenirs. Whenever he had the chance to get away from headquarters, he enjoyed poking about in the little shops in Seoul, searching for interesting knickknacks to send back to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh V. Giltner, in Pueblo, Colorado.

Not far from the parliament building--a gaunt structure bearing the scars of war--Sergeant Giltner halted to examine the wares of a street peddler. “I have nice rug you will like,” the peddler said. He pulled back the edge of a bundle, revealing part of a leopard skin. “This rug was made from leopard skins. It is very valuable,” the peddler said.

“How big is the rug?” the sergeant asked.

The peddler replied, “Very big.” He indicated by stepping off several paces that the rug was probably 18 feet long by 8 feet wide. “In your country,” the peddler said, “this rug would be worth several hundred dollars.”

The peddler unrolled the bundle to give the sergeant a better look at this bargain he was offering. Giltner saw that it was, indeed, a large rug of leopard skins. It appeared to him as though it were not in the best of condition, but he liked the idea of surprising his folks in Pueblo with a genuine leopard-skin rug. “How much do you want?”

The peddler said he would sell the rug for 150,000 won, the equivalent at that time of about $25 in U.S. money. Then the peddler tugged at Giltner’s sleeve and whispered, “This rug is from the old queen’s palace. She was the last queen of Korea. It is worth $2,000 in United States.”

Sergeant Giltner was impressed. He agreed to pay 150,000 won. He picked up his new souvenir and lugged it back to the barracks, where he tossed it into a corner. He would send it home later by mail, as he had such gifts as a black lacquer chest, a lamp fashioned from a beer can, and other souvenirs of his stay in Korea.

But Giltner’s plans for shipping the rug were postponed. A lieutenant took a fancy to the rug and, pulling rank, persuaded the reluctant sergeant to part with his souvenir for the purchase price. That same evening, the lieutenant lost the rug in a poker game to Lieutenant No. 2, who sold it to Lieutenant No. 3 for $50. Lieutenant No. 3 was going to send the rug to his parents, but then he decided it was too much trouble. He sold it to Sergeant Giltner for $25.

The sergeant stuffed the rug into a carton and mailed it home. He wrote a note to his mother: “... I figure you won’t have much use for this rug even after it gets there. But you can always sell it.... The rug like I said before is made of leopard skin--the real thing, and is mounted on red felt or something.... Just where you would put it beats me....”

The rug was a sensation in Pueblo. Neighbors dropped by to see it. It was so large that it could not be used in any of the rooms in the Giltner home. For the best viewing, Mrs. Giltner had the rug hauled out into the back yard and strung over a clothes line. The exact measurements of the rug were 18 feet 11 inches by 8 feet. It was embroidered at the four corners and had a red felt backing.

Mrs. Giltner told neighbors, “It’s too pretty to walk on and too big for my living room. I don’t know what in the world we’ll do with it.”

The Giltners sent the rug to a local firm for cleaning and storage. They valued the rug at $25,000 and had it insured for $16,000. The Pueblo _Star-Journal_ carried a picture of the rug with a pretty girl seated on it. The accompanying story said: “Owners of the rug are contacting museums and big-game hunters, with a view to selling it, since they feel it is too valuable for their use, and their home will not accommodate it.”

Denver’s Collector of Customs Harry A. Zinn saw the news story in the Pueblo paper. He thought it odd that an American sergeant should be sending back a $25,000 rug to the United States. He forwarded a copy of the clipping to the Supervising Customs Agent in Chicago, saying, “Enclosed is a newspaper clipping, the subject of which you may consider warrants some investigation.” The Customs agency certainly was interested in investigating the importation of a rug of such value.

At the same time, the Korean Consul General in New York, David Namkoong, was displaying interest in the report of the rug shipped from Seoul. Namkoong realized that the rug was one of the national treasures which had been stolen from the palace in Seoul at the outbreak of the Korean War. The rug had hung in the Chang Duk palace, the home of Queen Min. The palace had been made into a national museum where the Koreans displayed historical treasures of the ancient kingdom. Many of these treasures had been among the loot taken by Communists and civilians during the first invasion of Seoul. Mr. Namkoong told a reporter for _The New York Times_, “The rug is worth about $100,000, if such a priceless national treasure can have a price tag.”

The Korean government and the United States government took the view that young Giltner was an innocent purchaser of the rug and that he had knowingly violated no law in sending the rug home. A Customs agent hurried to Pueblo from Chicago to impound the rug. It was placed in storage for safekeeping in Denver pending its return to Korea. The Korean government reimbursed the Giltners for all the expenses involved in the shipment, cleaning, storage, and insuring of the rug. And thus the case of the souvenir-hunting sergeant and the leopard-skin rug ended on a note of international good will.

The case of the leopard-skin rug presented no difficulty for Customs in establishing the historic and artistic authenticity of the rug. But classification in the field of fine art is not always so simple. Customs has become embroiled in some hilarious and notable cases of this sort.

Early in this century, Congress decided in the interest of promoting culture to permit, free of duty, the importation of paintings, sculptures, and other art objects which could be classified as “fine arts.” It was when Congress began defining fine arts in legal language that the trouble began. For example, a sculpture was defined as something which is representative of an animate object in nature that is in its true proportion of length, breadth, and thickness. When this definition was written, members of Congress did not take into account the abstractionists and the modernists, who hardly view their subjects in their “true proportion of length, breadth, and thickness.”

With the passage of this law, Congress automatically converted every Customs appraiser in the United States into an active critic and judge of the arts. This was so because--whether the appraisers liked it or not--they had to decide whether an import was a work of fine art and thus free of duty. No shilly-shallying about it. It was or it was not subject to duty. Juries of eminent art critics might enjoy the luxury of disagreement; the Customs appraiser had to say yes or no.

This was the situation in 1927 when the distinguished sculptor Constantin Brancusi sent from Europe a highly polished bronze figure called “Bird in Flight.” The bronze was about 4 feet 6 inches high and stood on a cylindrical base about 6 inches in diameter and 6 inches in height.

In his effort to describe the sculpture, Justice Waite of the Customs Appeals Court would write: “The importation ... terminates at the top in a point which might be caused by the cutting of the piece diagonally across and upward until it terminates in an edge. It increases in size as it descends with a slight curve to the middle, from which point it decreases and terminates about ten inches from the pedestal, where it is cylindrical, and from that point it increases in size on a conical shaped base which rests upon a pedestal....

“The piece is characterized ... as a bird. Without the exercise of rather a vivid imagination, it bears no resemblance to a bird except, perchance, with such imagination it may be likened to the shape of the body of a bird. It has neither head nor feet nor feathers portrayed in the piece.... It is extremely smooth on its exterior which is a polished and burnished surface....”

When a Customs examiner first saw this objet d’art, he decided that it could not, from his viewpoint, be called even a reasonable facsimile of a bird. As he studied it further, he was unable to detect the “true proportions” which were necessary to meet the requirements of the law laid down by Congress for duty-free statuary.

His ruling that the famed “Bird in Flight” was not a work of fine art touched off a storm in the art world, with much derisive comment aimed at Customs. Edward Steichen, the importer of the Brancusi work, appealed the examiner’s ruling, and when the case came to trial in 1928, he was flanked by an imposing list of witnesses ready to testify that Brancusi had indeed produced a work of fine art in “Bird in Flight.”

The witnesses who came to the defense of Brancusi were Sculptor Jacob Epstein, Forbes Watson, editor of the _Arts_ magazine, Frank Crowninshield, editor of _Vanity Fair_ magazine, and William Henry Fox, director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

After hearing all the evidence, the court conceded that “under the earlier (court) decisions, this importation would have been rejected as a work of art, or, to be more accurate, as a work within the classification of high art.” However, it noted that opinions of what constituted high art had undergone changes under the influence of modern schools of art.

Finally the court said of the statue: “It is beautiful and symmetrical in outline, and while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental, and as we hold under the evidence that it is the original production of a professional sculptor and is in fact a piece of sculpture and a work of art according to the authorities above referred to, we sustain the protest and find that it is entitled to free entry....”

The storm kicked up over the Brancusi bird created little more uproar than the arrival in New York in May, 1955, of an abstract painting by the European artist Dr. Alberto Burri. It was a most unusual work of art, as it consisted of several pieces of burlap sewn together and affixed to a board, stencilled with letters, and decorated with birds painted in oils. The artist said the effect of the whole was to convey a spiritual sense of the order in life. He valued his work at $450.