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George II & All That. After selling his life story to the News of the World (for a reported $40,000), Alfie settled back to crack the laws of England. In the course of researching Alfie's abstruse legal quibbles, plump Lila Stuckley, his common-law wife, became a familiar figure in the British Museum's venerable reading room. Said she: "Oh dear. I find it all very difficult. Laws going back to 1742. George II and all that, and that queer language with all those double efs instead of esses." Alfie, to litigation born, delved up enough dusty arguments to sustain a two-year marathon through British courts. His most appealing line: by a convenient "flaw" in British law, prison breaking is nowhere clearly defined as a misdemeanor.
Alfie's last court of appeal was the austere House of Lords, where he spent three hours arguing his case in 1960. When one learned peer lost his place in an obscure reference book cited by Hinds, Alfie chided: "My Lord, you are not with me." Last week, on another tack. Hinds tried and failed to get yet another hearing before the Lords. As he was led away to serve half-a-dozen more years in tightly guarded Parkhurst Prison, Lila was on the point of tears. "This time," she said. "I am really afraid." Alfie's admirers had more confidence. Only last month, prison authorities found that Hinds had fixed the lock on his cell so that he could get out at will.