A week ago James Michael Curley's Campaign Headquarters, the Hotel Brunswick, was a blaze of flags, posters, and retouched photographs. But when we visited the hotel last Thursday to find out how sincere Curley's campaign withdrawal was, nothing remained but tattered stickers peeling off the windows. It seemed as if the "Governor," as his party workers call him, was really pulling out of the election race.

Climbing a flight of stairs and entering a barren room with dirty green walls, we found that things weren't so dead after all. A switchboard operator was busy directing the heavy traffic of telephone calls, and rough-looking men were pushing bales of "Curley, Courageous, Capable" posters from one back room to another. We asked one of the poster-pushers where we could find Curley's publicity director. After looking us over thoroughly, he pointed to a diminutive man in shirtsleeves and shouted "Callahan! These two guys want to see Smith." Callahan said Smith was on the telephone and we would have to wait.

Al Smith was an unassuming man with horn-rimmed glasses and a shifty voice. When asked if Curley was moving out of the building, he took us down a back corridor, opening door after door, and saying, "Look, look in there, there are eighteen rooms and they're all empty. The only reason we're here is to take care of Mr. Curley's mail, see? But look at these rooms, empty, all empty."

When we returned to the reception room there were five graying women clustered around a big table stacked with lists of registered voters, chanting out names, addresses, and party affiliations. Four of them resembled washerwomen but the fifth was nattily dressed in a tweedy jacket, orange scarf, and a chic red hat. Three typists had appeared during our short absence and were peeking out news releases. Smith explained "Of course Mr. Curley's regular political life keeps him busy. That's the only reason these people are working now."

AL Smith had to leave for a telephone call, which gave us a chance to look over the rest of the suite, the part that Smith did not bother to show us. All the rooms were dirty, dark, and deserted except for the one facing Copley Square and the Boston Public Library. There a large number of men were smoking cigars and listening to the Giants beat the Yankees, 5 to 1. We approached a tubby man with his feet propped up on a desk and asked, "Who is Curley's real campaign manager?"

"Well ... I guess you would kind-a-say ..." He stuttered for a moment and frowned, "I suppose Kelly really is."

"Kelly, Tommy Kelly!" he yelled to a back room. "There are a couple of guys out here to see you." A voice from the back room yelled back, "He's on the phone." We stood around for half an hour while various men yelled at Kelly. After AL Smith had called three or four times, a small man in a blue pin-stripe suit waddled up and introduced himself as Tommy Kelly. He repeated what the publicity man had said before and added that he did not know how we could get a hold of "the Governor." "The Governor was meant to come in here this afternoon, but I guess he went shopping instead," he added.

Tommy Kelly went back to his telephone, leaving us with AL Smith. "I've been with Curley forty years," Smith lamented when asked about Curley's withdrawal, "and I've never seen anything like this." Then he turned red and said angrily "Some people forget favors you've done for them the very next day." He recounted some of the favors Curley had done for the poor, from Christmas baskets to labor legislation, and told us, "That man has got a bigger heart than head."

Thanking AL Smith, we started to leave. Two men were still pushing around bales of Curley posters, and we asked why. "We're taking the posters down town," one of them said. "That's where Curley's new campaign headquarters will be. Better location, you know. All this (withdrawal) business is just a bluff."