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By Root 2394 0

at Rhinelander. In fact, as FBI files make clear, there was never any plan other than a vague idea that the inn would be surrounded. Inspector Rorer told Hoover afterward that they “had been unable to make plans because of the lack of time, but expected to do so upon their arrival.”19ch Worse, though Assistant Director Clegg was the senior agent on the ground that night, there was considerable confusion who was in charge. At various times Clegg, Purvis, and Inspector Rorer all issued orders.20

As the men on Little Bohemia’s porch scrambled into a Chevrolet coupe, Inspector Rorer, whose capture of Machine Gun Kelly gave him a certain authority, snapped at Purvis: “Hurry! Hurry!” Hoping to encircle the lodge, Purvis told him to take two men and head into the woods on the left. Clegg told other men to head into the trees at their right. As they spoke the Chevrolet’s headlights flashed on. Music could be heard, eerily wafting through the chill night air. The car began to back up toward them. Suddenly the driver threw it into forward and made a sharp U-turn, the Chevrolet’s headlights swinging around toward where Clegg and Purvis stood frozen in the driveway.

There was no time to concoct a plan; there was barely time to think. Instinctively—no one seems to have shouted an order—Clegg and Purvis, along with an agent named Carter Baum, jogged toward the car, guns drawn. As the car veered toward them, Purvis and Clegg yelled, “Police! Stop! Federal agents!” Other agents—scrambling into the black woods—joined the chorus of shouts: “Stop the car! Federal agents!” The car surged forward. Two men appeared on the inn’s porch and began yelling; in the din no one could hear their words.

The car wouldn’t stop; as Purvis and Clegg moved up the driveway, it was heading straight for them. “Fire!” both Purvis and Clegg shouted. Shots rang out all across the clearing. Purvis’s submachine gun jammed, but Agent Baum raked the car with his own tommy gun. Glass shattered; tires exploded. The car sagged to a stop.

Just then a shadowy figure darted out of a cottage from the right side corner of the inn. The figure fired a pistol at Purvis—bullets struck the ground at his feet—then disappeared into the woods at the right. In the confusion no one gave chase.

All this occurred in barely ten seconds, by the later estimate of Inspector Rorer. As the firing began, Rorer and two agents, T. G. Melvin and Lew Nichols, fast-walked into the trees toward the left side of the lodge. As they walked, Rorer told the two agents to keep space between them. Just as he spoke Rorer rounded the side of the lodge, where he glimpsed the shadow of a man preparing to jump from a second-floor window.

“Police! Stop!” Rorer yelled, then fired.

A burst of machine-gun fire answered from the window. Bullets zinged through the trees. In the light of the muzzle flash Rorer could see two men at the window. Agent Melvin fired three blasts from his shotgun. A moment later Rorer looked up; the men at the window were gone. He was certain they had been forced back inside the lodge.

Back in the driveway the firing had stopped. Purvis and Clegg began shouting for the men inside the damaged Chevrolet to come out with their hands up. The driver’s door opened. “Hold your fire!” someone yelled. Before anyone could react a man jumped out of the car and sprinted into the woods on the right, where a half-dozen FBI men were running toward the lake. Several had already passed behind the lodge’s wood-frame garage and stumbled into a barbed-wire fence, from which they were attempting to extricate themselves in the darkness.

Agent Harold H. Reinecke was right behind these men, running toward the lake, when the man fleeing the car nearly crashed into him. “Halt!” Reinecke yelled. But the man turned and ran. “Halt!” Reinecke yelled again. When the man kept running, Reinecke raised his shotgun and fired twice, missing. As the man disappeared into the darkness, he fired one more blast, missing once more.

As Agent Reinecke chased the unidentified man in the woods, a second man emerged from the car,