When our cars reached the entrance to Capone’s gate, Al’s bodyguards directed us to drive to a designated field, where each car was searched. The occupants were given the once over, too. Some of us were even frisked. There was exceedingly careful screening of each guest; after all, Capone had a price on his head. Then we were all escorted by bodyguards to the main room of the spacious home and each was introduced to the famous gangster. Though these were prohibition times, bottles of champagne popped. The finest bottled beer was piled on the tables, all from Capone’s private stock, safely hidden on the premises and guarded by “specials.” Capone asked some of the writers, among them Sid Mercer, Murray Lewin, Westbrook Pegler, Paul Gallico, Francis Albertanti, Runyon and myself, to inspect his special cache of liquor in an underground room. We left the women in our party engaged in conversation in the living room, though some donned bathing suits for a swim in the outdoor pool, which, like other parts of the Capone estate, was closely guarded from behind the shrubbery. No one was permitted to go out of bounds—that is, near the shrubbery where guards, well armed, patrolled the area, so fearful was Capone of an attack by his enemies. When we returned to the dining room for refreshments, one of the women who had gulped down too much of Capone’s vintage champagne, collapsed, and in falling from the couch, dislodged one of the cushions. Immediately there was a dive for the couch by two of Capone’s henchmen, not to help the woman, whose name I won’t mention, but to cover two sawed-off shot guns and several loaded weapons which had been hidden under the huge cushion. We were seeing things! Capone’s brother, who found the situation embarrassing, explained that the weapons were there merely for safe keeping. They were souvenirs, he said. Of what? Probably the Moran massacre in Chicago. The unfortunate girl was carried to the upper floor powder room, where she was placed in the care of one of the maids. During the commotion, someone had stolen a diamond ring from Mrs. Capone’s boudoir and the story of that theft, through a slip of the tongue by Capone, became the newspapermen’s property shortly before we left. Westbrook Pegler, then writing for the Chicago _Tribune_ syndicate, had gotten wind of the loss and rushed off to file a story. Joe Williams, of the Scripps Howard Syndicate, and Paul Gallico, writing for the New York _Daily News_, did the same. Capone was furious. He pointed the finger of guilt at us, intimating that someone in our party had entered his wife’s bedroom and stolen the ring. When he learned that several newspapermen had left to write the story about the theft, his tone grew threatening. In his story the next day, Pegler described the party and remarked, “While Capone was entertaining the scribes, one of his henchmen was busy robbing his master’s home.”