LONDON LETTER
431
Then yet again this money was insured. Now, insurance is an
admirable institution, yet it unquestionably has made theft seem less
wicked than in the days before it, when a man could be ruined by a
robbery. Additionally, it is well known that insurance companies are,
in fact, licensed and scientific gamblers, placing odds against fate at
most profitable rates; and when fate betrays them, nobody is really
sorry.
There can be little doubt, in general, that this
coup
heralds the
entry of English crime into its industrial era. The professional core of
English criminals-perhaps no more than 5 percent of the total of
what are known as the "criminal cIasses"-are becoming increasingly
well organized technically and, above all, well financed, so that the
planning of the theft, the leisurely disposal of the loot, and the social
security of families of any of the robbers who may fall by the wayside,
can be more efficiently looked after. And the chief fear of the authori–
ties, in the present instance, is not just that £21'2 millions of unearned
income injected into the economy is inflationary, but that this huge
sum will be used to finance further large-scale thefts. Hence the
enormous reward (10 percent of the sum stolen) offered to informers
and potential traitors; and the joyful atmosphere of a treasure hunt
that surrounds the initiatives of the general public in trying to track
down this horde of stolen notes.
Has the Hal Woolf affair been reported in the American Press–
or has it been swamped by more sensational items emanating from
our sedate group of islands? Hal Woolf, whom I knew well, was
a competent neo-academic portrait painter, with a wide circle of
bohemian friends who felt for him great affection; and last November,
Hal disappeared in London. Thanks to the persistent inquiries of his
former wife-with whom he had remained on excellent terms-it
transpired that he had been knocked down by a car in Park Lane,
slightly injured, and admitted to a hospital. There the doctors dis–
covered he had in his possession Indian hemp, and the police were
informed and arrested him on his discharge from medical care.
Shortly after this, he was re-admitted into another hospital special–
izing in brain surgery, where he died after some days, with police
officers at his bedside. Despite his wife's having already initiated police
inquiries, she was not informed of his hospitalization until after his
death had occurred. When she identified the body, she found his head
badly mutilated.
Spurred at last by Press interest (initiated by the indefatigable
