And,

While he was in New York, Ann M. and Elizabeth R. brought him to my dance studio on Madison Avenue for lessons in the Argentine tango. His wife, the beautiful Irina Alexandrova, niece of the Tsar, fortunately never appeared, as she undoubtedly would have objected to them addressing him as Felix, instead of "Your Highness." too, she might have questioned his motive for staring so often at Mike, directing traffic on the Avenue. He had an excellent view of Mike from the small iron grilled balcony outside my studio on the second floor. It may have been that Mike reminded him of the superbly built officers of the Russian Imperial Life guards he frequently entertained in the privacy of his palace. Or he could have been contrasting him to the girlish young Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, his former slavishly devoted lover who assisted him in the grisly murder.

Whichever it was, Liz or Ann had to remind me time and again that he was having a tango lesson. Oddly enough, he needed Ann's help learning it. More muscular and more gauche-minded than he was, she did the leading. Whether he knew she did, I don't know. What I do know was that Mike ignored Felix staring at him, and that he strongly disapproved of him "smelling like a two-bit whore," and "that red shine on those long fingernails of his." Yet Mike managed to be talking to Ann's chauffeur every time she, with Liz and Felix, left my studio and climbed into her two-toned bronze Rolls.

A bathroom connected my walnut-paneled studio in the front of a brownstone mansion with Tommy Guinan's (brother of "Texas") speakeasy in back, making it easy for me to spot to spot prohibition agents snooping through the hall and warn him. Fortunately, Mike had nose for them, and blew his whistle twice to alert me every time he saw them enter the building.

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Sexy, a good looker and passionately fond of fresh Parma violets, Tommy may have been the reason so many of my women students took breaks during their lessons. I always bolted the bathroom door to his quarters before they went in, but never bothered when men used the room. One afternoon, when Felix was enthroned on the jon, drunk staggered in. Felix didn't budge. The man used the bathtub and the next one baptized the washbasin. According to the account Tommy gave me: "All the guys got curious about him. They couldn't get in there fast enough. Felix sat on the can like he was glued to it and couldn't get up. But he finally did and sailed into your place with his nose in the air."

Supplied, as he was, with Nell Alexander's atomic "White Mule, Tommy had no problem getting the hooch he needed. Nell distilled it in a woodshed that shared a spreading elm with a backhouse behind her clapboard cabin. Husky as a stevedore, she wore faded overalls and a jumper and rammed an ice pick through the tight bun of black hair on the nape of her broad neck. "It's easy to grab if the law ever catches me with my pants off," she explained.

Weather permitting, Tommy and I bundled my thrill-starved stu dents (with husbands on the Stock Exchange) into his armored Packard and sped to Nell'8. Introductions over, Nell showed them the still and its very efficient guards, two mean-looking hounds.

"They treed a couple of prohibition skunks prowling around here one night," she said, "and kept them up there yelling their fool heads off 'till morning. Since then, it's been quiet as a nun's crotch around here."

Before the excited ladies left, Nell gave each a nip of "White Mule" and a sample bottle of it labeled Turpentine "to take home to your old man. He can get all he wants at Tommy's by rapping on his door and telling him Nell sent him."

At Mike's suggestion, we took Felix, with Liz and Ann, to Nell's one June afternoon. Mike went ahead and had barbecue ready by the time we arrived. And Nell had changed the sheets on her bulky

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