Ruin

+-+-CRIME

"Shady Rest" was a funny kind of roadhouse. It had dynamite in the cellar, machine guns in the windows. Men sat around, spat on the floor, fingered the triggers of their rifles. One day, last November, an airplane flew over and dropped some bombs which missed the house. Nobody was killed; it was only a minor disturbance. Last week "Shady Rest" trembled, burned, collapsed. It became a ruin overnight. And what is more, it contained four bodies, charred beyond recognition, full of ugly bullet holes.

There had been another battle down in Little Egypt,+- and of all the places for a good machine-gun-spattering, bomb-throwing fight there was none better, than the late "Shady Rest." Not far from Herrin, Ill., it was the pastoral citadel of Charles Birger, bootlegger, gunman, gang chieftain. Carl Shelton, whose profession is the same as Mr. Birger's, had set out to get Mr. Birger. The ruins and the four dead bodies were the result. But Messrs. Birger and Shelton are still alive and plotting. Perhaps, they will really get one another some day. Their attempts in the last five months have resulted in the killing of 13 people, including a couple of mayors.

+-Southern end of the state of Illinois.