Word: spooks
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...believed he could communicate with spirits, that he had supernatural powers. But as the movies began to edge vaudeville into the wings, the master escapist earned most of his headlines by proving that anyone who claimed such magic was a fake. While he tilted with the table rappers and spook producers, he continued to produce new stunts for the stage. He was still at it in the fall of 1926, when he let a college boxer test his vaunted toughness by punching him in the belly. Less than ten days later, Harry Houdini, 52, was dead of a ruptured appendix...
...Grook," the keyword of the novel, always refers to something ominously exciting, not fully understood, worthy of a boy's wonder and solemn respect. Dr. Sax. the hawk-faced, silent, evil-battling spook whom Jack Duluoz invents (and then sees, fearfully, in every dark doorway), gets from place to place by grooking. Dr. Sax plays poker incessantly, has a high, fiendish laugh ("Mwee hee ha ha ha"). And when his stalking of the evil Great World Snake makes it necessary, he pulls a rubber boat out of his slouch hat, pumps it up and paddles across the Merrimack...
Dombrowski's defection was welcomed not only for the information he brought, but as a badly needed shot in the arm for Western "spook" organizations, which are one of Berlin's major industries. They have had a bad year. The chief of a West Berlin refugee camp for Russian and Polish defectors last month was arrested and reportedly confessed that he had been working for the Communists since spring. The potent Investigating Committee of Free Jurists, whose network of spies in East Germany helps make life miserable for the Red rulers of that unhappy state, suffered a series...
...around them is changing. While applauding the Western underground's previous services against the Reds-which include everything from smuggling out scientists to sending anonymous warnings to East German authorities that their misdeeds are being recorded -Berlin officials and newspapers have begun to suggest that some of the spook groups are overdoing...
West Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt, who regards much of the underground activities as "grownups playing cowboy and Indian." wants the Berlin senate to examine how to get "rid of certain undesirable activities in the twilight zone of political propaganda." The spook business is causing dissatisfaction in East Germany, too, but of a different sort. Dombrowski's boss, Major General Karl Linke, has reportedly been given the boot for letting Dombrowski get away...